Postscripts: Collin Klein’s Goodbye, NCAA’s Project Division I, Big 12 Celebrities
What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
This week, A Kansas State G.O.A.T. says goodbye, the NCAA has new opportunities to screw things up and a former TCU coach has a new job.
Collin Klein’s Goodbye
There are few players one would associate with Kansas State more than Collin Klein. Which, for Kansas State fans, makes his move to Texas A&M all the more excruciating.
As a quarterback he was the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year in 2012 and a Heisman Trophy finalist. The Wildcats went 11-1 and won the Big 12.
As a coach he spent all but one season starting in 2014 with Kansas State, first working as a graduate assistant under Bill Snyder and then eventually moving into the offensive coordinator role under Chris Klieman.
On Friday, Klein sent K-State fans a little thank you on social media.
Thank you K-State! #EMAW pic.twitter.com/n2hJesOhDP
— Collin Klein (@CK_KleinCollin) January 6, 2024
It’s not often a coach so associated with his university can survive a coaching change like Klein did. That’s the power of his star in Manhattan.
Now, he heads to Texas A&M to be their offensive coordinator. Don’t let the hiring of Holmon Wiggins as co-offensive coordinator trick you into thinking Klein won’t be the play-caller. He will be. Wiggins, a former Alabama coach, will coach wide receivers at A&M. Wiggins was an assistant head coach at Alabama and likely helped construct game plans. He’ll probably do the same at A&M.
But Klein will call the shots. He has to. If he doesn’t, then why would he have moved? There’s a reason why the Aggies made this sort of move after Klein’s hire. It was all baked into the process.
One day, perhaps, Klein will return to Kansas State as head coach. Perhaps that’s the dream of some Wildcats fans. But it won’t happen soon, given what Klieman has done with the program. Klein knows that. It’s why he has now, finally, struck out on his own. Whether it’s at Kansas State or not, Klein will be a head coach one day. This move is part of getting there.
Let’s Pull The Band-Aid Off, Shall We?
This week when the NCAA meets it will start considering the proposals that president Charlie Baker circulated last month.
Called “Project Division I,” Baker is proposing three things. First, allowing schools to make Name, Image and Likeness deals with their own athletes. Second, allowing schools to offer unlimited amounts of educationally-related benefits. Third, most radically, the concept of a new FBS subdivision where school deposit $30,000 per athlete into a trust for at least half of their athletes.
The third concept builds on recommendations made by the Knight Commission way back in 2020 (remember that?). The commission’s idea was to basically allow FBS to be its own thing, separate it from the NCAA, and allow it to manage itself.
Baker’s third idea takes it one step further, as it would likely create a much more significant gap between the haves and have-nots in FBS and likely create that third division that I believe is coming — and it’s the division that will ultimately play for the College Football Playoff championship exclusively one day.
If — and I mean IF — it all plays out as per a reported timeline, the NCAA could study the proposal this spring, produce final recommendations in June, take action in August and then take final action on proposals next January when the entire NCAA meets.
When on EARTH has the NCAA EVER moved that fast on ANYTHING?
Ross Dellenger of Yahoo!Sports has all the details on each proposal. It also includes the transfer portal proposals.
Honestly? This is the way things are going in college sports. The sooner that the NCAA and its member schools embrace all this and create a common-sense approach to all of this the cleaner the break will be for all of us who are simply exhausted by all of this.
But when has the NCAA ever done anything with common-sense? Exactly. This is going to take FOREVER.
Former TCU Coach Back In The Game
Less than a year after moving on from coaching, former TCU women’s basketball coach Raegan Pebley is back in the game.
On Friday the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks named her the team’s general manager. She’ll be in charge of basketball operations and will have the No. 2 and No. 12 picks in the WNBA Draft in April. This will be Pebley’s first WNBA leadership position.
Pebley’s time at TCU didn’t end the way she would have hoped, as the Horned Frogs won a total of 16 games in her final two seasons before she stepped away after discussions with athletic director Jeremiah Donati.
Still, she won 133 games, led the Horned Frogs to three straight 22-win seasons and four WNIT bids. Had the 2019-20 season not been curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Horned Frogs likely would have made the NCAA Tournament, as they were 22-7.
Before TCU she was coach at Utah State and Fresno State, and before that she played two years in the WNBA after a standout career at Colorado.
While with TCU she kept her toe in the WNBA as an analyst for Dallas Wings games in the summers.
The New Big 12 Brings Celebrities
Earlier this week Arizona hosted Colorado in a Pac-12 game that, come next year, will be a Big 12 game. While Frank Caliendo joined the ESPN broadcast and did a spot-on impression of Bill Walton, before the game one of comedy’s biggest names was getting his shots in at the McKale Memorial Center.
@AdamSandler playing 3 on 3 before the Arizona-Colorado game: pic.twitter.com/x3hBQ8vija
— Aidan Wohl (@aidan_wohl) January 5, 2024
That’s a solid no-look pass from Adam Sandler. That dude’s gotta finish that off at the rim.
First Shaq, then Nelly and now Sandler. The celebrity sightings in the new Big 12 are gonna be crazy, right?
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
