College sports conferences don’t make any sense any damn more. Texas and Oklahoma are gonna play South Carolina and Vanderbilt every year, UCLA and USC are joining the damn Big Ten, which means they’ll play Big Ten schools Rutgers and Maryland, Kansas and Kansas State will not play Nebraska or Missouri anymore but might get Colorado back and will definitely get UCF and BYU in the near future, The best golfer is a black guy, the best rapper is a white guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America’s Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn’t want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named “Bush”, “Dick”, and “Colon.” Need I say more?
Sorry. When I get going it’s hard for me to stop. But there must be a reckoning – and this one can’t come out of Athens, Georgia. We all understand why it is this way, I’ve had midwits on Reddit tell me over and over again that it’s about money, as if any of us were under any different impression. It’s Fox, it’s Disney, it’s a desire for a consolidated television product that guarantees marquee games each week – and while that is all well and good for Lincoln Riley and whatever the name of the guy who coaches UCLA at the moment, and it’s been providing dividend after dividend for the power football programs in my native Kansas City area – We Kansas fans love our Big XII doormat status and look forward to our away games in Utah, and the Missouri fans love the slow recognition that their primary value in the SEC has shifted from “Will get the SEC network on to cable packages in St. Louis” to “Tomato Can for the actual power SEC teams.” – It is completely senseless for basically everyone else.
What of the non-revenue olympic sports? The football programs understand that they have to go play at the Bounce House in Orlando because it’s the only way we at Kansas and Kansas State can keep our collective College Football Playoff aspirations alive. But what of the talented tennis player from Great Bend who gets a scholarship to K-State with no intention of playing professionally, why should they have to go to Provo? Why should they need to take hours-long airplane voyages to Ohio and West Virginia? What of the collective collegiate spirit of the Kansas City metropolitan area? Shouldn’t those matter just as well?
I’m daring to say yes, they do matter, and I, along with my business partner Mike, with whom I had the idea driving in my car the other day, have a solution:
Introducing: The Tank 7 Collegiate Athletics Conference

Continue reading →