What-If Wednesday: Texas Football Avoids Big 12 Teams, Houston Basketball Wins the League
Welcome into our newest feature, we’re calling, “What-If Wednesday”. In this column, I’ll propose a handful of questions that, at this point, have not come to fruition. But IF they do, what will come out of it? What’s the end game?
Join us for this one and let’s have some fun.
What If Texas doesn’t play Big 12 teams after they move to the SEC?
Then all Big 12 teams should do everything in their power to fill their non-conference slates with other SEC teams.
It sucks, but I can’t say I blame Texas for being on the fence about scheduling Big 12 teams in the future. It’s the same reason Texas and Texas A&M didn’t play each other the last 10+ years. Both sides felt it had more to lose than to gain.
In this case, Texas would have much more to lose by playing Texas Tech, Baylor or TCU and losing a non-conference game than they would be playing the game and winning it. If they lose, the other programs could use it to recruit against them. If they win, well they were supposed to come out victorious.
But for any Big 12 team hoping to get a future non-con vs. Texas, just go scheduling whoever you can from the SEC and the Big Ten, sans Vanderbilt and Rutgers. But go after the rest of them, at the highest level possible, because the Big 12 Conference will need to prove itself on the field.
What If Bill Self’s ejection wasn’t about the Texas Tech game?
Then it was really about continued frustrations with Big 12 officiating, which puts him in a similar spot to Scott Drew and Kelvin Sampson, who were both also ejected this month due.
Self was ejected after getting two technical fouls back-to-back with just under six minutes remaining in a 79-50 loss at Texas Tech. He became the third Big 12 coach this month with a first-time ejection at his school.
“That was frustration, but I felt that all year,” Self added. “So, good officials … good officials, I just don’t see it the same way that it’s being called.”
Self said there has been a lot of physicality, “more this year than there has been in years past.”
The Big 12 clearly has an officiating problem on its hands, as its most prominent coaches are dealing with ejections at an unprecedented rate and soon enough, the league office will have a problem on its hands if some major changes aren’t made.
What If Houston wins the Big 12 basketball regular season?
It will be a huge testament to the program Kelvin Sampson has built.
This was the best college basketball conference in America before this season. And then the Big 12 adds four new teams and one of those four new teams wins the league in Year 1?!
We won’t talk enough about it, but we should, since UH is in first place in the league right now. This conference is a night-in, night-out grind, and to walk into the league and possibly win the conference cannot be overstated.
By the way, UH is favored right now.
Houston is a heavy favorite to win the regular season title and land the top seed in the Big 12 Tournament, now at 5/11 (-220) odds. Iowa State comes in with the second-best odds at 5/2 (+250), with Baylor and Kansas tied for a distant third at 14/1 (+1400) odds. Then, Texas Tech, who was perched at the top of the Big 12 standings less than two weeks ago, now has the fifth-best odds to win the league, at 22/1 (+2200).
It’s an incredible time to be a Houston fan, and we’ll see how the rest of this regular season plays out.
