Big XII Falls Down on Job, Baylor - A&M; NOT Televised

Last night, did you wish you were getting the 5 OT thriller at College Station between Baylor and Texas A&M, both of whom were ranked? Were you thinking about the implications the game could have on the NCAA tournament? Did ESPN's Gamecast not update fast enough?

If you thought, like I did, that we didn't get the game because it was in a different region, Andy Katz notes that you're wrong. The game wasn't televised AT ALL. No regional FSN, no local Comcast affiliate, no conference network, no MASN equivalent, no one had this game. (You can stop ordering a more expensive national college basketball package now.)

The real question here is: WHAT WAS THE BIG XII THINKING? Maybe before the season, this game looked like a blowout. But I thought yesterday that this would be a good game that I would like to see: two ranked teams competing for national legitimacy, one recovering from a dead program and the other replacing their coach and star PG. The storylines were everywhere and the best games occur when both teams really want to win. But inexplicably, the game was not televised anywhere, not even College Station or Waco. Can you imagine being a Baylor student and having to watch the Gamecast online like the rest of us?

The Big XII is primarily a football conference, but recently basketball has occupied a more prominent role. Kansas and Texas have both been consistently highly ranked. Texas A&M got good under Gillespie. Texas Tech has Bob Knight. K State has a star freshman.

ESPN carries some Big XII games, but where is the equivalent of RJ or the Big Ten Network? The conference is responsible for promoting its product, and this game would have had a decent audience, even before OT, especially regionally. Conferences like the ACC, SEC, and Big 10 have almost every game televised at least to their part of the country, and the games are ALWAYS televised when two ranked teams play. The Big XII needs to get with the 21st century and take advantage of the quality product they have to offer.