Terry Mattingly thinks “culture” may play a role if Baylor doesn’t get an invitation to the Pac-10. It can’t be because of performance (well, in everything but football):
[Baylor] just came within a strange call or two of beating Duke, the eventual champion, and marching into the NCAA Final Four in hoops — for men. And the women on this campus recently won the whole shooting match and have one of the nation’s flashiest young players. If you add up all the sports on campus, this cultural misfit has been a Big 12 powerhouse (but not in football).
Mattingly doesn’t discount the part that television markets play, but he commends columnist Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman for highlighting the ‘culture’ angle—
Baylor has tried to play politics to usurp Colorado and be included in the Big 12 exodus to the Pac-10. I don’t think the Bears will succeed.
First, the Pac-10 is partial to Colorado. Always has been. The Pac-10 seems to sense a kindred spirit in the Buffs. Boulder is sort of Berkeley East; a funky, liberal bastion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
And no way is Baylor attractive to the Pac-10. The Pac-10 always has been allergic to Brigham Young, another church-based school. Baylor is the nation’s largest Baptist university. A Baptist friend of mine says Baylor actually is quite liberal in Baptist eyes, but I don’t think that’s a concept Berkeley recognizes, liberal Baptist.
“So,” Mattingly asks, “are we about to see a world in which there are conferences that are divided by ‘culture’ as well as by TV market shares?”
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