Big 12 Church

This isn't all about football... so stick with it you people who don't know about football (Missouri and Iowa fans).

As a person who resided in Nebraska until I graduated college, it almost goes without saying that I am a fan of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Yes, I am one of those classy and overinformed fans you have heard about. Yes, I have friends who pay to be members on recruiting sites so they can know about "our" players before they are even ours. Yes, I watch the game every week even if I have to stream it on ESPN3 or something and if it isn't available to watch, I listen to it online. Yes, I have already read three articles about the Huskers this morning. Yes, my 3 year old son is in his third season as a fan and has been shouting "Go Big Red" during games for two of them. Yes, when I talk about Nebraska football I consider myself a part of it, using words like "we" and "ours" and "us."

For the uninformed, we are just now returning to the standard of play that Husker fans expect. The legendary Tom Osborne left and we had Frank Solich, Bill Callahan, and embarrassment until we all got what we needed and what we wanted before they foolishly hired Callahan -- Bo Pelini. He is fiery, he is tough, he is a genius. For the second time he has now come to Lincoln to coach a team (he initially came as Defensive Coordinator) that was ranked at the bottom of the pile in defense and immediately turned them into a top ten defensive team. This time, he is in charge of the whole team, so they are top ten as a whole, not just defensively. We had a Heisman candidate last year in DT Ndomukong Suh, who went on to be the second pick in the NFL draft. Now it seems we have one on offense in our record breaking freshman QB Taylor Martinez.

Now for some reason, NU's Big 12 opener was scheduled on a Thursday, so it got all the attention last night. In this 95th consecutive meeting with K-State, there was a lot to talk about. There was our defense holding the guy who was 1st in the conference and 5th in the nation in rushing yards to about 100 fewer than his average without changing our game plan and stacking the box. There was our QB rushing for over 240 yards for a school record, and our team rushing for over 400. There was our ju-co transfer LB getting 16 more tackles. There was all the "game" stuff, but then there was something larger - the fact that this was the last match up between these two teams - Nebraska is leaving the Big 12 for the Big 10.

As a Husker fan, I am not heartbroken. I am not to stuck on the tradition we had in the Big 12 - that only started in 1994. I am disappointed we have to leave behind some longtime rivals from the original Big 8, but our biggest rival was lost when we joined the bigger conference and no longer played Oklahoma annually.

With the Big 12 there has been a gradual shift of power to Texas. They have more teams, more money, and more fans. The North division has been fairly weak for a few years, but teams like Kansas, K-State, Colorado, and even Missouri have potential off and on. Either way, when the headquarters, most of the teams, money, attention, and even championship game are in Texas, the best team in a weak division is a big loser. They had the power to fix it, but they had what they wanted and didn't want to share.

Then the Big 10 comes into the picture. They are a conference with even more history than the Big 12. They have a handful of really good teams and a few great ones. They have a TV network, they have profit sharing, and they have brains. Unlike the Big 12, the Big 10 retained longstanding rivalries even if they were cross-division match ups. They made sure the divisions were split to retain parity, not just to cut down on driving distances. The made decisions based on what wasn't going to be bad for anyone, what made sense, and what made success most likely for everyone... and now the Big 12 is bitter.

If you don't want to share and are unwilling to fix problems and mistakes, don't be afraid when your friends take their toys and go home.

For the rest of our conference match ups, the Cornhuskers will face hostile fans calling them quitters and accusing them of treason as we march over them on the way to a likely match up with Oklahoma in the Championship game: a storybook ending regardless of who wins. They didn't want to change and are embittered by the idea that we were willing to cast off the past for the future.

The past is important, but we are supposed to learn from our history, not remain mired in the mistakes of our fore-bearers.

I work in a church, so this is kind of my specialty. I have no need to list specific examples, but the description makes it easy to pick them out: large and small, personal and corporate, relevant and trivial.

A few times while trying to do different things with purpose in all of the places I have worked, I have found little oddities and asked why we do things that way. A common response is that no one really knows - and the old cliche emerges - because that's the way we have always done it.

The response that I find more amusing is when the reason is known and it is no longer relevant, yet for years no one evaluated what was going on so the practice was carried on without it's initial purpose. I have been fortunate to encounter people who, for the most part, don't mind casting off such pointless practices. The hardship comes when you come across a group or individual who clings relentlessly to a historical tradition simply because it is historical and traditional - not because it works, or makes sense, or anything more.

Like the Big 12.