Adding Nebraska Cornhuskers to Big Ten Shucks Tradition

This is so depressing. I'm the last sentimentalist left in sports. I mean, after this silly conference expansion, what happens to the Big Ten legacies of Woody, Bo and three yards and a cloud of dust?

Nebraska folks know nothing about that.

Nebraska folks could care less.

Nebraska folks are into Oklahoma, period, but something outrageous is on the horizon: No more Nebraska versus Oklahoma. They played football last season for the 85th time, and they are scheduled to meet again during the 2012 and 2013 seasons.

After that? Forget it, and Nebraska folks better care about that, but it actually won't matter. Their Cornhuskers are off to the Big Ten in the upper Midwest as opposed to staying with the going, going, almost gone Big 12 that includes others from the Great Plains.

Not only that, Oklahoma is a "yes" vote from leaving as Nebraska's long-time foe by moving its conference affiliation to the far west.

What we have here with the Big Ten and the Pacific-10 lighting the fuse that will blow up the rest of college football with expansion is the beginning of the end regarding tradition in the sport. Full Expansion Coverage

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• Nebraska Joins Big Ten
• Colorado to Pac-10
• Boise State to Mountain West
• Texas, A&M to Part Ways
• What's in a Name?
• Oklahoma State Booster Unhappy
• Travis: SEC Should Target A&M
• Lapointe: Tradition Loses
• Moore: NU Shucks Tradition
• Big 10, Notre Dame Talking
• Outside Influences on Notre Dame
• WAC Also Waiting Around
• Whitley: All About Money, Not Fans
• SEC Likely Has Flexible TV Contract


Come to think of it, tradition is way at the end of the line behind greed when it come to most things in athletics these days.

They've got lights at Wrigley Field, and they are threatening to do the same at Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby. Sudden death is now six feet under for NFL playoff games. They've got "girlie" zone defenses in the NBA (that's what Phoenix Suns coach Alvin Gentry called his own zone earlier in the postseason). They've got oversized tennis rackets to spit on the legacy of Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg and the rest.

Now they've got Colorado agreeing on Thursday to bolt the Big 12 for the Pac-10, and they've got Nebraska on the verge of trying to develop a rivalry out of nowhere with Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State as well as with Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.

This is absurd.

"I'm sure (Nebraska's pending switch of conferences) weighs heavily on Tom," former Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer told The Associated Press, referring to Tom, as in Tom Osborne, the former Nebraska football coach turned athletic director for the Cornhuskers.

Added Switzer, "I hate to think we (Oklahoma) would lose what we have and what we built for so long. Finances are a factor, and sometimes you have to give up tradition for finances."


Well, you really don't. Not unless you just wish to do so, and such is the case throughout college football these days.

The Pac-10 is expected to expand by six with Colorado, Oklahoma and four other teams from the Big 12. The Big Ten will rise to 12 after the addition of Nebraska, and then the conference might grow to 16 after grabbing four teams from the Big East.

Soon afterward, the SEC will have to do something. The same goes for the ACC, with speculation that college football eventually will have four super conferences of 16 teams apiece.

Whatever. Notre Dame won't happen.

In fact, Notre Dame never will happen for the Big Ten or any other conference, because Notre Dame wants to keeps its independent roots, which first sprouted with Rockne and the Four Horsemen.

I'm not Catholic, and you may not be, either, but we all should thank the blessed Virgin Mary, the ghost of Frank Leahy or something for having at least one university out there that won't sell its tradition for the sake of a few extra television bucks.

This goes beyond the fact that Notre Dame already has its own ATM of a network in NBC.

Former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz told me earlier this year, "Each administration at Notre Dame makes certain decisions, and when I was at Notre Dame (for 11 years through 1995) under Father (Theodore) Hesburgh, their philosophy was that we were not going to go into a conference, because we were a national school ... and consequently, we had an obligation to play all over the country to play the very best.

"We played the Michigans, the Michigan States and the Purdues. But we also played Tennessee. We played Texas. We played Florida State. We played Miami. We played Ohio State. We played Washington.

"We played all over the country, and we had fans all over the country, and we could not fulfill that by just playing in the Big Ten, which basically just makes you a regional school."

Uh-oh.

This is what Holtz told his current employer, ESPN, on Thursday when asked about Notre Dame's future as an independent: "I think that Notre Dame has to start looking at the Big Ten now, because while its other sports are playing in the Big East Conference, and if the Big East gets raided by the ACC, SEC, etc. ... Plus, I think Notre Dame in the Big Ten makes more sense now than it ever did before.

"I've always been a proponent that Notre Dame would never consider it, but now I'm not so sure."

This is for sure: College football is losing its magic while accumulating its money and drop-kicking its memories.

Not that anybody cares besides me anymore.