KC v. Omaha, and Husker crying

The Big 12 meetings are this week, hence the massive amount of articles about Big 12 sports in the KC Star this morning. The ADs from each school will be discussing a number of issues, chiefly where the conference football and basketball tournaments will be the next few years.

The contenders in football include Kansas City, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Here are my thoughts on this. The football game should rotate every two years between Kansas City and some Texas site. Why? Because KC is the only viable site in the North to hold the game, and it IS a viable site (more on that later). St. Louis is no good, it's not a Big 12 town. Denver? They've never asked for it that I know of, and anyway Denver isn't really a Big 12 town either. No other city in the North has a football stadium to accomodate the game. Thus, KC is the natural site in the North.

If I had my way, the game would rotate between KC and Dallas every two years, with San Antonio thrown in every once in a while. Dallas, at least as football goes, is a decent Big 12 town. Not only that, but they're building a $1 billion, 100,000 seat palace for football. Of course, that doesn't mean jack if they don't sell tickets for it, but I'm guessing they will, especially considering the town is almost guaranteed to have Oklahoma, Texas, or Texas A&M every time the game is played there.

You might be thinking to yourself, "Gee, TB, you live in Houston, why don't you want the Big 12 game there?" Personally, I'd love to have it there. I live near the stadium and could go to the game, especially if my Cats make it back. Problem is, as the Star notes, Houston is not a Big 12 town. It's not a town at all. It's a big goddamn city, and it's as much an SEC city as a Big 12 city. There's no strong Big 12 identity in Houston unless the Longhorns or Aggies are playing, and they don't give shit about the Big 12, as I've mentioned previously.

Now, on to basketball. Five freaking cities are vying for the mens and womens conference tournaments. Five. Yeah, that's ridiculous. The five are Kansas City (pictured above on top), Omaha (pictured above, below), Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Dallas.

There's no room for debate or rotation on this issue. The Big 12 basketball tournament should be in Kansas City EVERY YEAR. Yeah, that's right, every year. Why? If you have to ask that, I have to ask "Why not?" Look at Kansas City. It's 120 miles from K-State and Mizzou, and 40 miles from KU. It's a little more than 200 miles from Lincoln, and an easy drive from Oklahoma State and Oklahoma. The city loves it some Big 12 basketball. Further, it's built the $276 million Sprint Center, right in the middle of downtown, near a lot of good entertainment. And if that's not enough, there's still Gates BBQ.

What's wrong with the other cities? Let me count the ways.

Omaha: Are you kidding? Qwest Center Omaha is a nice facility, it really is, but Omaha is not a Big 12 city. It's a Nebraska Cornhuskers' city. Omaha likes to tell you how it loves its college sports and how great it is in supporting college sports, but it doesn't walk the walk (ask AJ). The reason people show up to the College World Series is for the party. I went to the CWS for the first time last year, and while I did go to the actual games, I was more concerned with drinking myself into a stupor on 13th Street. And don't get me started on the NCAA volleyball tournament there. It's easy to set record crowds when a Husker sports team is playing for a national title in Lincoln in December, because there's FUCKING NOTHING ELSE TO DO IN NEBRASKA IN DECEMBER! If the Husker women's volleyball team had lost in the third round of the NCAA tournament, the crowds in Omaha would have been roughly equivalent to, if not smaller than, the crowds at any average volleyball Final Four.

Dallas: Don't get me started. American Airlines Arena is the nicest facility in the mix for the tournament, but it's in the absolute worst city for the tournament. Let's see...have the tournament in a palace and play the games in front of 17,000 empty seats (Dallas)...orrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...have it in a beautiful new arena in front of a packed house for pretty much every game (KC)? No brainer to me. Dallas is a pro sports town, who loves its butter-fingered quarterbacks and Downy-soft "power" forwards.

Tulsa: Ummm...Tulsa has anything but golf courses? Could have fooled me.

Oklahoma City: OKC is the only other city that has a viable claim to having the tournament. The Ford Center is a nice facility, although it ranks third to AAA and the Sprint Center. The city did a good job of hosting the tournament, but we're talking about OKC here. Raise your hands if you prefer OKC to KC or Dallas? Ok, now we know which two of you need to be committed to the Betty Ford clinic.

As you can see, the basketball tournament needs to stay in Kansas City, permanently, period, end of argument and discussion.

***

The fighting Nebraska Crybabies fell in OKC tonight to the K-State Bat Cats, 5-1. This keeps K-State's conference title (and NCAA tournament) hopes alive after yesterday's dreadful 19-10 loss to Texas. NU fans have spent a half a message board's worth of crying about Jordan Cruz's alleged hard slide into NU catcher Mitch Abeita, not to mention repeated calling for an earhole pitch in retaliation.

Boo-fucking-hoo. First of all, let me ask how many of you bitches actually saw what happened, rather than hearing about it from Husker Information Minister Jim Rose (who is lower than a flabby hunk of whale shit). I'm guessing not very many unless the one TV station up there was showing a live feed from Bricktown tonight. Second, the main reason you were crying was it happened in the sixth inning when you were already down 3-1.

Look, it's baseball, it's not always a gentlemanly sport. And the fact that your dumbass head coach and pitching coach got tossed doesn't impress me at all. Those pussies get tossed in 1 out of every 4 games you play, whether they really got wronged or not. I didn't see the slide at issue, and I'm guessing none of you did either. You have no idea if it was a hard slide or if it was clean and you're dumbass catcher just had his foot in the wrong place. Suck it up and get ready for your ass-ramming against Texas. Not to mention the reality that we could beat Texas A&M and move on to the conference tournament finals.

Have a great weekend everybody. Sorry, no pics from the Royals game tonight, but I'll try to have some up next week.