The Dumb and The Rest of Us.

This week on: The Dumb and the Rest of Us

· Dan Beebe steps down as Big XII Commissioner

· Texas A&M officially joining SEC Conference

· 5 Teams in the Big XII Ranked in Top 20

· Texas Currently Ranked Number 17

· Iowa State has sold the most season tickets ever

The Texas A&M Aggies will officially join the SEC conference in July 2012, making this football season the school's last in the Big 12. Postponed due to opposition from other schools unwilling to waive their right to sue the SEC, talk of opposition has died down in recent days as the national media casts its collective eyes on yet another last-second survival by the Big 12. It's unclear at this point whether or not those schools waived their right to sue or if the SEC removed that condition for acceptance.  The move is effective July 1, 2012, with competition to begin in all sports for the 2012-13 season. 

Texas President William Powers declared Wednesday that the Longhorns are open to a new revenue-sharing model and have already suggested that top-level television and cable money be shared equally.  What's not on the table is the money from Texas' 20-year, $300 million deal with ESPN to create the Longhorn Network, which has been blamed in large part for Texas A&M's pending departure from the SEC.  The Big 12 splits the revenue from its $1.2 billion Fox Sports contract evenly, but only half of the money from its top-tier deal with ABC goes into equal shares. The rest is weighted toward the programs that play on the network more frequently, such as Texas and Oklahoma.

This thing has got me scratching my head more than complex fractions.   I was of the understanding there would be no math (part of the reason I became a Marketing Major).   Honestly, this story line is as complicated as a non-linear equation with more variables than I have fingers to count on with a couple Cosines and some derivatives added for extra spice.   So, here is my Math word problem:  If Pittsburgh and Florida are parachuting from a plane flying at 15,000 feet with a landing pad in the ACC, and Texas A&M is leaving on a train heading East toward the SEC at a speed of 75 miles per hour, and Missouri is standing on the street corner like a $50 hooker waiting for the highest bidder, and TCU is being Fed Exed back and forth between The Big East and The Big XII, and BYU, West Virginia, Connecticut, Notre Dame, Boise State are all hanging with their homies, how long will the Big XII survive?????

Through Wednesday of last week, Iowa State has sold 37,446 season tickets and orders continue to come in. The previous record was 36,610 in 2007. The Cyclones' opening two home games drew the second (56,085 vs. Iowa) and fifth-largest (54,672 vs. UNI) crowds in Jack Trice Stadium history.  "We have already sold more than 53,000 tickets for our game against Texas (Oct. 1)," said Pollard.  Iowa State is on a pace to average more than 50,000 fans per home game. The Cyclones' current home attendance average is ranked 35th nationally. That mark is higher than seven schools in the Big East, eight schools in the Pac-12, seven schools in the ACC and five schools in the Big Ten.