Iowa State was in the 'Desperate Five,' but helped save the Big 12

Chip Brown of Orangebloods.com has gotten himself a source or two in his decades covering college sports in Texas.

Here is his tale of the days leading up to the Big 12 going from comatose to again vital.

Passages I found most interesting:

Athletic director DeLoss Dodds and UT women's athletic director Chris Plonsky smell the rat: Texas is going to get blamed for breaking up the Big 12 AND for ripping up the 100-year rivalry with Texas A&M. The Aggies aren't going to the Pac-10 (and were leaning toward the SEC, instead). The Aggies aren't budging. ...

The five schools who appeared to be the pall bearers for the Big 12 - Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State and Baylor - make a commitment to hand over their share of the $35 million to $40 million in penalties to be paid by Nebraska and Colorado to Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M. ...

(The Pac-10's Larry) Scott and (Kevin) Weiberg leave Lubbock feeling like they've got Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Tech. All they need now is Texas, and they can figure out the rest (sub Kansas for Texas A&M).

But by the time Scott and Weiberg get to Austin on Sunday night, DeLoss Dodds and Chris Plonsky are already feeling queasy about everything, according to sources. ...

And Scott and Weiberg made one critical mistake in the courtship of the Big 12. Other than its somewhat foggy math that a 16-team Pac-10 could readily get to $20 million in TV revenue per school, they wanted to substitute Kansas for Oklahoma State late in the process, according to multiple sources in the Big 12. ...

We learn from the Texas and Beebe media conferences and some more reporting from sources that ABC/ESPN basically protected its investments and held off college realignment by allowing the 10 schools in the Big 12 to keep all the money ABC/ESPN agreed to pay the league through 2016 when it had 12 members and a conference championship game. ...

Why would ABC/ESPN agree to such a bad deal? I'm convinced because it didn't want to see Texas and Oklahoma disappear to the Pac-16 conference network likely to be run by Fox. ABC/ESPN, in my opinion, also saw the possibility of realignment coming if the Big 12 fell apart, and that could have led to remodeling the SEC and ACC, conferences in which ABC/ESPN has more than $4 billion tied up in TV contracts.

There's a lot more to Chip's story than what the snippets I posted, so check it out. The whole story will make a great book one day.