ARLINGTON, Texas — When a university announces plans to exit its current conference, the immediate conspiracy is that the team will get the shaft whenever possible until it's done and gone.
With Texas and Oklahoma in the final year of their time in the Big 12, the respective fan bases of both are going full QAnon. They are both sure the Big 12 is out to get ‘em.
Last week at Big 12 Media Days in Arlington, Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione dropped in for an appearance, the perfect time to ask him the following: “When a team leaves a conference, there is a fear that they will get the short end of the stick in some instances, do you prepare for it, or is that more myth than reality?”
“I think it can be both,” Catiglione said.
(Not the answer I expected).
“That’s such a broad question, but it can be both,” he said. “Certainly we don’t feel that, or sense that, from anybody that we’ve worked with by any (Big 12) school, or within the league.”
QAnon, saddle up. This myth will soon be sold as a reality.
Any time an officiating call goes against Texas or Oklahoma this season in a Big 12 game, plug your ear drums with Gorilla Glue and duct tape. The flood of noise from Norman and Austin will be the universal cry of, “We’re getting screwed because we’re going to the SEC.”
“That would be really, completely improper for me to make some remark about that,” Castiglione said about UT and OU’s exit potentially affecting officiating. “If it happens, we will make that comment to the conference through the normal process for it. At least if we think it happens.”
It will. Because it will happen to every team in this conference at least once.
“Coaches of all teams do that throughout the season regardless of the reason,” he said. “It gets handled and we have replay. There is so much video, sometimes even in the moment it may look different than it really is after you watch the video.
“We use the process that’s in place. No one is going to hear us saying that.”
At least not publicly.
Publicly the people at Texas and OU are not preparing for these scenarios. They are preparing for another one.
“I don’t think we will be getting parting gifts from any of the fan bases that we compete there this year,” Castiglione said. “At least nothing that we’d want to take home with us.”
When visiting other Big 12 stadiums this season, both Texas and OU fans would be wise to pack N-95 masks, doggie doo bags, a case of industrial-strength trash bags, as well as Lysol and a crate of Windex.
For the record, I am not a conspiracy guy.
A group of people beyond three is collectively too stupid, present company included, to successfully execute anything sophisticated beyond ordering a cheeseburger and fries. Even then, there are pickles despite saying, “No pickles!”
Someone always blows it, and the grand plan goes to hell. Both history, and the current news, is loaded with such examples.
An officiating crew for a Big 12 game consists of 11 people.
“Screwing over” Oklahoma and Texas would require all 11 people to be aligned at the same time to pull it off properly.
Given the scale of the damage OU and UT’s exit will ultimately do to the Big 12 Conference, such a plan is worth contemplating. Alas, planning your fall Saturday around such tragedies is an idiot’s errand.
Because these things don’t occur.
Even a coach who once alleged they do later explained they don’t.
In 2004, then-Kansas coach Mark Mangino famously ranted after a close loss to Texas. A controversial call late in the game directly affected the outcome, and Kansas lost to No. 6 Texas by four.
After the game, Mangino charged that the officials were influenced by Texas’ chances of reaching the BCS, which would not have happened had the Horns lost.
In 2017, he explained to me that his rant was theatrics; that he was defending his team after a painful loss.
“There is no grand conspiracy to hurt a team,” he said in that interview. “It’s not that anyone wants to hurt anyone. I’ve never met an official who wanted to do that. I was in the Big 12 for a long, long time and I didn’t believe it, and I never saw that.”
Because it doesn’t happen.
Now, bad officiating? Incompetent officiating?
Yes and yes.
If you watch, play, or coach, you just have to deal with the bad and the incompetent that are part of an entire game, and pray one or both doesn’t hit you in the final five minutes.
People are too stupid to pull off conspiracies.
Texas and Oklahoma, when you lose it will not be because you’re leaving the Big 12.
There is no conspiracy. Nonetheless in a few months such myths will be accepted by some as realities.
QAnon, saddle up.
