A Geographer's Nightmare...

TCU announced earlier today they'll be leaving the Mountain West in a couple of years. This is just the latest in a season of college conference shakeups. Some of the moves make more sense than others, but for the shifts that don't make sense, I'm not sure who to blame: Texas or the SEC.

Once upon a time, most of the collegiate conference landscape made sense geographically (especially after academics and size where taken into account). The Big 10, the Pac 10, and the Big 8 dominated the Great Lakes, West Coast, and Great Plains regions respectively. One could have included the ACC and SEC until Georgia Tech and South Carolina flip-flopped conferences as well as the Big East until the early '90s.

But major changes came to the college landscape in the early 1990s with geography and academics, which had been the leading factors in conference alignments, being replaced by plane and simple greed. No longer do regional rivalries take center stage. Instead, it's about TV markets, more specifically, TV markets for college football.

It's with this shift that my nightmare begins.

I'm not sure if the SEC is behind this, but not being a fan of a college conference (for many reasons which I will not include here), I'm inclined to assess at least some of the blame to them. Why must college conferences have 12 schools in order to have a conference championship game? If this were not the case, would the Pac 10 and Big 10 felt obliged to attract a 12th member? Why not have conference championship games for conferences with 10 schools?

I'm still trying to make sense of the conference shake-ups from this past summer. The Big 12, a conference I believe made a lot of sense geographically, nearly ceased to exist with the exit of Colorado and Nebraska. Had Iowa State chosen to jump ship for the Big 10, I doubt many would have noticed (maybe even not noticed for several years). It simply fits with the other Big 10 schools. But it was CU and NU that decided to leave, not Iowa State.

CU's departure was relatively minor. Sure, Buffs fans are less likely to travel to Pullman or Corvallis than Lubbock or Stillwater because of the logistics of travel, but culturally they fit in with the other Pac 10 schools. Nebraska, on the other hand, is leaving a conference that it fit geographically as well as culturally with rivalries dating back nearly 100 years.

Do I unequivocally blame the Huskers for the resulting mess? Not entirely. Maybe not even mostly. If you've read anything about Texas' monetary demands, it's tough to place too much blame on Husker Nation. Nebraska will be entering a conference that shares revenues equally with all schools in the conference. What a novel idea! One might even think academics and geography still matter there.

I bring this up today because it was announced earlier today that TCU (Fort Worth), which never was a truly good match for the Mountain West, will be leaving in 2 seasons for the Big East. A conference where their nearest rivals will be Louisville and South Florida (Tampa) and include such unlikely academic comrades as Providence, Marquette, Syracuse, and Georgetown.

I pray for the day where geographic sanity returns to the college landscape.

On Passing Large 'Cats...

The ultimate test in determining one's manliness is in how he answers the question of what is the perfect pet?

A) A dog.

B) A cat.

C) A dog that eats cats.

Having made my sentiments on cats clear, there's something that has always fascinated me about large cats. Lions, tigers, leopards. All are beautiful. All are graceful in movement. All can crush bones in their jaws. It is somewhat fitting that I was a "Bobcat" at Montana State and finished a "Wildcat" (aka--'Bobcat') at K-State.

In the West we have several large cats that still roam free: mountain lions, lynx, and bobcats. These are elusive animals and, although I have lived most of my life in the West, I would still count myself lucky to see one in the wild. Yesterday I had such an opportunity on a quick trip up to Laramie along US 287.

The creature walked like and was about the size of a medium size dog. Everything about the sighting was wrong: wrong time of day (11:00 am), wrong environment (out on the open, snow drifted plains), and wrong setting (along a relatively busy highway). But there it was nonetheless. On first glance I was sure it was a bobcat, but now I'm not so sure. It may have actually been a lynx.

At any rate, the sighting was a reminder that I have had moments over the past several months worth recording. But I haven't. Not for any good reason other than I've been...well...lazy.

Highlights would include:

MR & MRS KIPPLE... Traveling to Atchison, Kansas, for Curtis and Cassidy's wedding. Very thankful I was able to make it there and take part in the festivities. It was a good reminder of how many Godly-men I had in my life while at K-State.

AVS REUNION... The first game of the season had a pre-game ceremony for the 1995-95 team. That team won the Stanley Cup their first year in Denver. Pretty special to me even to this day.

(btw: first time I was able to see Peter Forsberg on the ice!)

GPRM REGIONAL CONFERENCE... The Great Plains/Rocky Mountain Regional Conference was in Lawrence this year and happened to be the weekend after Curtis' wedding and the day after the Avs' first game of the season. Lots of driving to take all of these events in (thankfully the Avs won in thrilling fashion (3:40 of OT) which made the drive much more tolerable). Seeing many of my geography friends once again was really great, especially Matthew.

Other than those events, it's been life as usual: teaching, grading, and drinking coffee.