Hlas column: Saving their seat at the Big 12 table saves Cyclones' athletics

People with families to feed must sometimes swallow some pride.

Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M will lap up the buyout money to the Big 12 Conference from Colorado and Nebraska, with the gritted-teeth blessings of Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri.

Why? Because, as Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe said Tuesday, OU, UT and TAMU had other options. Life is all about leverage.

Iowa State and its four pals in league limbo had no options. ISU had an athletic family to feed. Whatever it took to keep to retain the big dogs and keep five-sixths of the Big 12 together, Iowa State had little choice but to agree to it.

Everything but a restructured Big 12 was a bad alternative for Iowa State. The Mountain West would have been a big step down in revenue and profile. Going from the Big 12 to Conference USA? That's the college sports equivalent of a witness-relocation program.

So, the Big 12 will keep those television dollars coming Iowa State's way, more than before if Beebe is to be believed. The Cyclones can still play games in Jack Trice Stadium and Hilton Coliseum against marquee opponents who sell tickets.

It may not be overstatement to say the cash Iowa State won't lose from a Big 12 breakup will save its athletics program. All appears well, for the next several years, anyway.

Cyclones women's basketball coach Bill Fennelly on Twitter: “I am so happy for our student-athletes and fans! I have always believed good things happen to good people - this is sure a great example”

But while ISU certainly should be able to successfully compete in most sports, it will be pushing a piano up a circular staircase when it comes to football. Which isn't anything new, actually.

The Big 12 will go to nine conference games a season, and you hide from no one. That's Texas and Oklahoma (and Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State) every year.

Iowa State hasn't beaten Texas or Oklahoma in six games against each since the Big 8 became the Big 12 in the mid-1990s. Iowa State went to just one of its six bowls since 2000 in a season in which it played Texas and Oklahoma.

I was in Norman, Okla. on Oct. 19, 2002 to cover what was college football's game of the week. The Cyclones went to Oklahoma with a 6-1 record and the No. 9 ranking in the nation. They had crushed Nebraska, 36-14, and before that gave Iowa what would be its only regular-season loss of the year.

The second-ranked Sooners mauled ISU that day, 49-3. Iowa State has never been in the Top Ten again.

As I noted here recently, the Cyclones have been to more bowls (six) in the last 10 years than Illinois, Michigan State and Northwestern, among others. But start playing all those Big 12 South teams every year, and you have to do an amazing job of coaching, recruiting and performing just to be competitive.

As uneven as the financial playing field is between Texas and the Big 12 North leftovers, it will only grow wider once the Longhorns' television network is created.

Nebraska was sick and tired of being sick and tired of Texas, of its edge in television money, of its influence in the league, of the Big 12 football title game recently being awarded to Cowboys Stadium outside Dallas for 2011 through 2013.

But the Cornhuskers had an option. They're looking ahead without angst.

Iowa State and its northern neighbors will happily take what they can get this time around, and see how the winds of Texas blow in the future.

No one in Ames is complaining, nor should they be. A lot was salvaged. The Cyclone family will keep getting fed.