Tuesday, March 8, 2016

There's the Sign Post up Ahead...

If you want to know what kind of a weird parallel universe college sports inhabits, note this item at CBS Sports: The Big 12 athletic conference of schools must soon expand.

To 12.

You would think the name would imply 12 schools and teams, but of course you would be wrong. It started with 12 schools in 1996, when four colleges from the old Southwest Conference merged with the eight schools of the Big Eight. But in 2013, Nebraska took off to become one of the 14 schools in the Big Ten Conference, Colorado was one of the (believe it or not) 12 schools of the Pac-12 Conference and Missouri joined the Southeastern Conference -- which cleverly avoided all of the bizarro math by not including a number in its name. Texas Christian University and West Virginia University joined up, so instead of the Big 12 having only 9 teams, it has 10.

I could be wrong, but I think all of this arithmetically challenged hoopla happens because no one wants to try to change their marketing and public relations -- it costs money.

And those numbers are watched very very carefully, for both accuracy and accumulation. By people who did not get their degrees in public relations.

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