Its Done. Twelve is ten... Ten is either 12 or 11!

Conference re-alignment is done---at least for now. But a lot of school children are going to be might confused unless these leagues change their names. The Big 12 Conference will have ten members. The Big 10 Conference which was working with eleven will now have twelve and the Pac 10 now has eleven.

Sort of makes you think this whole thing isn't over, but sort of in an intermission.

If the goal is to have at least twelve in a league to allow for a post season tournament with the tourney champion elevated automatically to a BCS bowl then the Big 12 will need to get back to that number. At least the Big 12 was not cut to the Little 5! Had the four or five teams that decided to remain made their way to the Pac 10...or in Texas A&M's case likely to the SEC chaos would have really reigned. Now it turns in to just a small disruption.

Notice how now that Dan Beebe has done his job with a lot of help from Texas and reported concessions made to the Longhorns there is no real talk about making the Big 12 the Big 12 again by bringing in two replacements for Colorado and Nebraska. That will come. On that list will be the usual suspects, TCU and Houston. But don't automatically leave out Northern Iowa or Southwestern Missouri or even Tulsa. There ARE some candidates north of the Red River that would have to be considered.

Even Arkansas would be a nice fit if the Big 12 could figure out a way to make the TV revenues the Razorbacks would receive match those the school is already getting from the SEC.

Let us just sit back and savor the fact that the Big 12 lives as a league. Texas, Texas A&M and Baylor are still linked with Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and the schools that might haven been homeless. Baylor, of course, was in that list too but Astros owner Drayton McLane, Jr. who also just happens to head the board at Baylor, told me in New York over the weekend that the Big 12 might be saved.

When he said that things looked very bleak. Some of our readers thought it was just Drayton being his normally positive and upbeat self. It turned out he was right. Now, Drayton about this Astro baseball team....