RIP BIG XII (pronounced big twelve but it's only 7 teams now)

On Sunday a plane load of Texas officials landed in Oklahoma, hoping to save the Big XII Conference.  But Los Colinas in Irving, Texas will soon have more open office space to rent.  Put a fork in my old neighbor (when I worked for ICE now known as HSI).  The Big Twelve is down to seven and dead as Ana Nicole Smith.  Blame Howard K. Stern if you like.  I blame the greedy University of Texas.

OU’s board of regents had instructed school President David L. Boren to prepare a document to formally apply for admission to the Pac-12 before the UT officials arrived. ”There’s nothing Texas could have offered Oklahoma that would have changed their mind. They were set on leaving the Big 12 before Texas got there,” a well-placed source at a Big 12 school told the Austin American-Statesman, adding that Sunday’s meeting had a very friendly and cooperative tone.  “The Big 12’s done. Oklahoma wasn’t open to creating Big 12 stability.”

Oklahoma will be joined in the exodus by Oklahoma State to become the Pac-12’s 13th and 14th institutions.

Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive said on Monday that he remains “optimistic” that the Aggies would join his league by next summer. That leaves 7 in the Big 12.

Texas is going left with three options.  With the implosion of the Big 12, Texas has to decide between pushing for membership in the Pac-12 or Atlantic Coast Conference or turning independent. As I’ve written before, Texas has less than a zero chance of succeeding as an Independent.  But I’d love to see UT try and fail. UT has disappointed the great state of Texas due to their greed and unholy alliance with the evil ESPN empire.  

But Texas is more greedy than stupid.  So it boils down to joining a basketball conference where Texas could win the BCS automatic football Bowl bid just about every year.  Or Texas could maintain some self respect by going to a quality, competitive football conference, the PAC-12, soon to be the PAC-16, the NCAA’s first Super Conference. 

If Texas does the “right” thing and goes west they will be in the Eastern Division of the Pac-16 joining Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah and most likely Texas Tech.  If UT goes to the ACC, they’re dead to me. I’ll burn all my burnt orange and gear up in crimson and cream on Saturdays. OU not UT is the first college team full of Texans to be voted #1, 100 times, in the AP coaches poll.

Man up, tea sips. Repent and be saved!  UT has disgraced their institution and the state. Now is your chance to win back the vast majority of Texans, who aren’t part of the orange blood alum nation.  The Texas vs A&M million year old rilvary is dead due to your arrogance and greed.  Do the right thing for a change.  Maintain the Texas-OU Red River Classic and win some respect.

Oklahoma to Secede Texas And the Big 12 (Nine Actually) ?

The college football rumor mill kicked up a notch over the weekend with innuendos and comments indicating Oklahoma could leave the Big 12 for the Pac-12.

Oklahoma has indicated the Pac 12 is its preference if the Big 12 goes down in flames, and the move could have drastic repercussions, especially with its long-standing rivalry with Texas.

The match-up, best known as the Red River Rivalry, dates back over 100 years and is played each year in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. But if Oklahoma moves onto the Pac-12, as has been rumored, it could be the end of the rivalry, according to Oklahoma football coach Bob Stoops.

“I don’t think it’s necessary” to continue playing, Stoops told reporters during his weekly news conference on Tuesday. “No one wants to hear that, but life changes. If it changes, you have to change with it, to whatever degree.”

The University of Texas disgraced itself with their short sighted, unholy ESPN alliance, dubbed the Longhorn Network.  Make no mistake about it.  Texas is not Notre Dame. In fact, Texas is not BYU.  Not only does nobody outside the state of Texas (other than orange blood alumni) support UT , many within the state hate the tea sips.  Notre Dame and BYU have national support due to their afflation with the Catholic and Mormon faith. Texans are divided between the rest of the former Southwest Conference members including Texas A&M, Texas Tech, SMU, TCU, Rice, Houston and believe it or not non SWC team Oklahoma.  Tons of Texans attended Oklahoma, because they couldn’t get into Texas or A&M due to the 10% rule.

Texas is arrogant and greedy. Nebraska had enough. Colorado had enough. A&M had enough. And it is looking more and more likely that Oklahoma and Oklahoma State have had enough.  The Big 12 Conference is done.  The conference died when they backed out of the PAC 10 deal that they had agreed to in principle.  Texas A&M is going to the SEC and both Oklahoma and Oklahoma State may be going to the PAC 12.  Texas would be wise to dump the Longhorn Network and go hat in hand to the PAC 12, looking for a place to play.

I don’t have an affiliation with UT. I moved to Texas over 30 years ago after attending the University of Maryland and graduating from a small university in Georgia.  My wife graduated from SMU Law School and I’m a season ticket holder for TCU men’s basketball.  Both schools were screwed by Texas and all the members of the Big 12, when the Southwest Conference was dumped due to UT and company greed.  I Don’t really care what happens to any of the Big 12 teams, especially Baylor!  I have supported UT in the past, but the longhorns are losing me and thousands more like me by the day.

It looks like Texas “outsmarted” themselves on this one. And guess what?  There are tons of Texans who don’t give a shit. See how many are watching the Longhorn Network for details.

DirecTv Adding AMC HD - Big 12 Losing Conference?

After slowing its pace of adding HD channels dramatically as of late, DirecTV has finally satisfied one of the loudest and longest running customer requests by announcing AMC-HD will come to its satellites starting next Friday, September 9th.

There’s still a pretty long list of channels it’s not offering yet, but if you’re on contract and want to enjoy some Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and Mad Men (when it returns in March) in HD then today’s Facebook posting (just hours after it was dug up by the satellite sleuths at DBSTalk) is good news for you.

 DirecTv has also announced that they have no plans to carry the Longhorn Network.  Good for them.

If the over/under on the Big 12 Conference of 9 teams is 2 years give me the under. Oklahoma will announce within 3 week whether they plan on staying.  Either way, the Big 12 is done.  I’d like to see them go back to the original plan, moving Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to the Pack 12, making it the first super conference of 16.  SEC & Big Ten will follow,along with one other 16 team conference (Big East Football and ACC perhaps).  Four 16 teams super conference are the future of the BCS & big time college football.

Number of the Day: .3%

I recently wrote about an entry in the Bonzer Wolf Today group on the ESPN Tournament Challenge being in the 100 percentile, ranked #103 out of approximately 6 million entries. 

One of the 17 brackets in the Bonzer Wolf Today group is down to 1 team, Florida State. The owner of that bracket went 15/15 incorrect picks in one region, 1/15 in another! That ranks the bracket at #5,904,270 out of less than 6 million, in the bottom .3%  (POINT THREE PERCENT). 

This entry picked the correct winner of only two games in the entire lower half of the bracket (2 regions out of 4)

In case you are wondering, there has never been a “perfect” NCAA Basketball bracket and most likely, there will never be. The odds of picking a perfect bracket (every game either correctly or incorrectly) are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1. That’s nine quintillion to one!

Think of it this way: if every person on Earth randomly filled out 10 million brackets each, the odds would be less than 1% that even one would have a perfect bracket!

If you printed out each of those brackets on “normal” copy paper, the stack would reach from the earth’s surface to the sun over six thousand times.  The stack of paper would be 19.5 million times the height of Mount Everest.

Trying to wrap your mind around these numbers is like trying to imagine the size of the Universe.

If you’re feeling lucky the next time you are in Las Vegas, there are still a handful of Sports Books that will pay you $100,000 for going a perfect 15/15 on a fifteen team parlay card. The true odds for going 15/15 would return over $300,000 on a $5 wager.  But Las Vegas was not built on the actual mathematical odds!

By the way, the state of Delaware also offers a $5, 15-team football parlay bet which would result in a $100,000 payoff. The closest anyone has come to cashing that ticket is 14/15 winners with one tie.  A “tie” just like a loss pays nothing.

It’s not that the .3% bracket picked all the lower seeds! It’s not that this bracket was made up of “bad selections”.  What makes this bracket so amazing is when it picked the lower seed, the higher seed won and when it picked the higher seed, the lower seed won at a rate worse than 99.7% of the other ESPN Tournament Challenge entries.

Being in the bottom .3% is not about basketball knowledge or bracketology skill.  This is an example of plain ole bad luck!  By the way, I think this bracket has a decent shot at the bottom .1% if VCU takes out Florida State tonight!

How many of us can claim to be in the top or bottom .1% of anything?  The other end of that line is 99.9%!

These  numbers assume the chance of every team beating their opponent. But a #16 seed has never beaten a #1 seed (the bracket above selected all four of those #1 vs #16 seed games correctly).

Watch March Madness On Demand for FREE Online

I'm in Las Vegas again this year for the first week of March Madness. I will primarily be watching from the Sports Books and Poker Rooms around town. But I also brought along my iPad and all the games are available online for free.

While this month's NCAA mens basketball tournament will include every game airing in its entirety on TV, CBS or the Turner Sports channels truTV, TBS and TNT, the TV coverage will continue to be streamed online for no charge through March Madness on Demand. You can watch all NCAA tournament games live online, including iPads for the first time.

Last year's online coverage drew 8.3 million unique users. MMOD famously has a boss button which allows users to hide basketball and make a spreadsheet appear onscreen through a click of a button.

New elements include video streaming available to iPads for the first time, and iPhone and iPod Touch applications will be back, but will be free for the first time. (All Apple MMOD products will be free for the first time.) MMOD will also have expanded social media elements. Social Hosts will aggregate NCAA comments from Facebook and Twitter with new wrinkles like drop-down elements to show more stats and scores from tournament games other than the one you re watching.

The futures odds on the NCAA Champion are horrible of course. They always are after the teams are seeded. Kentucky is 15/1 right now. All of these can change in an instant based on a number of factors. The best value that. I saw was the George Mason 275/1 to win it all. San Diego State is only 12/1, I would guess because they are getting a ton of west coast play here in Vegas.

I did see some interesting lines downtown where I am staying. UCLA, Tennessee and Gonzaga are all 1.5 point underdogs tomorrow. Villanova/ George Mason is a pickem, as is Texas A&M vs Florida. Texas is a 9.5 point favorite and UNLV a 2 point favorite. I definitely like Oakland + 9.5 and George Mason even. I'm leaning towards all three 1.5 dogs too. You get 1.5 points added to the underdog's final score if you 're not familiar with sports bets.

Time to crash. I was down two buy in's playing video poker in ten minutes. But I came back and cashed out 5 buy in's ahead. It's always good to walk away a winner on the first day in town. It's 6:30 a.m. In north Texas!