Baylor's 'Dont Mess With Texas Football' Campaign Messes With Texas Football

The stock of Baylor Bears football is pretty high right now, thanks to Robert Griffin III and friends putting on a fantastic Friday night show to introduce the college football season, finally ridding us of conference realignment drama. What better way to take advantage of that than to dredge conference realignment drama right back up?

Outright pleading would be one thing, and worthy of a certain kind of respect, but Baylor's trying to sell the cause of Baylor football as being way, way bigger than Baylor football.

Texas A&M is going to leave the Big 12 soon for the SEC. Aggies fans are ecstatic about this. Texas Longhorns fans might be even happier. The Big 12 as a whole, however, is in serious trouble, but it's the Oklahoma Sooners who now have their fingers on the kill switch. So maybe you should be reading about a Waco, Texas school trying to preserve Norman, Oklahoma football, but it's a Tuesday morning and nobody's feeling like that right now.

Below, brief answers to Baylor's questions.

• Will Texans stand by and watch hundred-year-old rivalries be cast aside as the state's largest universities align themselves with other states across the country? The Big 12 is about 15 years old. The conference's rivalries have existed longer than that, you say? Well then, they'll probably continue to exist once the Big 12 dissolves. The only rivalry being broken up that anybody cares about is Texas-Texas A&M, and those two schools hate each other so much they could stand a decade or two apart.
• Will Texans sit and watch as Texas' flagship universities pledge their loyalties to other states? The Big 12 has schools in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, and until this year also included Colorado and Nebraska. Loyalties have been pledged all over the map for a while now.
• Will Texans stand by as our most promising student athletes are lured out of Texas by new rivals? Longhorns recruiting won't change. Texas A&M will pick up more recruits from SEC West country, and SEC West teams will dip into Texas with more success. SEC teams aren't really any more interested in picking off Baylor's recruits than Oklahoma, Missouri, Oklahoma State or Nebraska have been.
• Will Texans watch as our most precious resources-the great minds of the next generation-are exported to new conference institutions? Again, every Texas school in the Big 12 has always been a member of a conference that has included non-Texas schools. Like the hypothetical Texas high schooler that's suddenly going to start going to Georgia because of football couldn't also go to Missouri because of football?