What Just Happened? Vol. 17

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Life is easier to navigate for those of us unburdened by looks, wealth and power. It’s natural to appreciate what you have if you don’t think you deserve better. Making a big decision is a snap when options are limited.

Imagine the constant temptation of living even one day as, say, noted Texas Longhorns fan Matthew McConaughey. Those abs, those wavy locks, that leathery charm — they add up to infinite possibilities, and therefore endless second-guessing. Did I choose the perfect romantic comedy starring role, is my new Lincoln commercial inscrutable enough, did I marry the correct Brazilian model?

It must be maddening.

Back in the swinging days of conference realignment, when every Big 12 school had an open marriage with its conference, we all wondered who would be the biggest winner and loser when all the swapping stopped. Five years later, I don’t know who won, but the biggest loser has been the school that had the most options — Texas.

On Sunday, it was revealed that Missouri would meet the Longhorns in the Texas Bowl in their first matchup since Mizzou became the fourth school to leave the Big 12. The Tigers have every motivational advantage. The Longhorns, ranked No. 23 the preseason, had higher hopes than 6-6 in Tom Herman’s first year, but maybe they shouldn’t have. Since Mack Brown’s final season in 2013, they have a 22-27 record.

Once the king of one of the nation’s three most competitive conferences in football and men’s basketball, Texas has become a middling program in the fifth-best Power 5 conference. The former status could improve if Herman and Shaka Smart get things rolling, but the latter won’t. The Big 12’s status unquestionably decreased because of realignment.

As soon as the bowl matchup was announced, the infamous quote of former Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds was revived.

“Our bad years are not that bad,” Dodds told the Austin American-Statesman in 2013. “Take a school like Missouri — our bad years are better than their good years.”

Dodds made that statement to get at former Missouri AD Mike Alden, and it oozed with the arrogance that led to the decline of the Big 12. The attitude that worked in the Big 12’s infancy regarding revenue distribution and academic qualifications — give us everything we want or you can’t have us — wore thin. Texas’ insistence on getting ridiculously rich off The Longhorn Network at the expense of everyone getting a little rich with a Big 12 network was short-term thinking.

When multiple conference rivals called Texas’ bluff and explored other options, the Longhorns could have written their own invitation to any other league or held the Big 12 together. They just would have to give up on the LHN. But they were Gollums refusing to relinquish their “Precious.”

Since 2012, the Big 12 hasn’t won a football national title and has only two Final Four basketball appearances. While fellow Big 12 heavyweight Oklahoma has remained nationally relevant in both football and basketball, Texas’ good years have been — at best — all right, all right, all right.

When UCF hired Missouri offensive coordinator Josh Heupel as its new head coach, it created a series of decisions for Barry Odom that could have a significant bearing on the future of the team.

Most immediately, he has to decide who is calling the offense in the Texas Bowl if Heupel isn’t. Secondly, he needs a Plan A and B for making a hire. If Drew Lock decides to stay for his senior year, it would be crazy to change Missouri’s offensive system, so the hire should be someone willing to keep the status quo. If Lock leaves for the NFL, the coordinator should simply be the best available.

I didn’t fully understand the speculation — since debunked — that Heupel’s departure would affect Lock’s decision. For Lock, it’s a decision balancing his NFL draft evaluation with the legacy he could leave at MU. Again, I would assume the system will remain if Lock is willing to stay. Not that Lock is a noodle-armed system quarterback throwing 20 bubble screens a game — quite the opposite, actually — but why mess with a good thing?

As for Heupel, it was an offer too good to refuse. If Lock were to leave early for the NFL, Missouri’s offensive production and Heupel’s stock would likely drop next year. UCF is a massive school with an enrollment of more than 64,000 located in the middle of recruiting heaven. Only one Group of 5 school — UConn — has a bigger athletic budget than UCF’s $59 million. Two coaches, George O’Leary and Scott Frost, have led the Golden Knights to seasons with at least 12 wins in the last five years. The one negative, though, is that expectations are a bear when following an undefeated coach, creating a scenario where almost anything Heupel does next season will feel like a disappointment.

I thought Heupel did a terrific job at Missouri, maybe even more so in 2016 than 2017. When he arrived in Columbia, Heupel inherited the worst college offense I have ever witnessed, and he turned it into an average attack in his first year. He had help, obviously, particularly from offensive line coach Glen Elarbee, who turned a bunch of new linemen into a solid group. This season, Lock helped Heupel look good, mostly making the right reads on run-pass options and stretching defenses with his downfield passing. But Heupel helped Lock, too, as the quarterback has developed into a complete player rather than just a big-armed thrower.

This week’s non-revenue sports shout-out goes to Wayne Kreklow, who has guided the Missouri volleyball team to its second consecutive NCAA Tournament Sweet 16.

The Tigers (22-11) earned Friday’s date with top-seeded Penn State (31-1) — and what a daunting date that is — by upsetting Kansas and Wichita State in last week’s NCAA Regional in Wichita. This comes after starting the season with a 4-6 record, so Odom isn’t the only Mizzou coach who bailed out a sinking ship this fall.

Kreklow, a former teammate of Larry Bird on the 1980-81 NBA champion Boston Celtics, isn’t much of a self-promoter, but he’s been really good for an extended period of time.

He and his wife, Susan, took over at Missouri in 2000. At the time, the Tigers had posted seven straight losing seasons and were four years removed from an 0-28 record. The Kreklows have led Missouri to the NCAA Tournament in 14 of their 18 seasons, including a trip to the Elite Eight in 2005. The volleyballers were the first Missouri team to win an SEC title in 2013 … and the second Missouri team to win an SEC title in 2016 … and still the only Missouri program to ever win an SEC title.

This week, Tennessee’s fans and talk-show hosts finally approved a coach, ending the weirdest hiring saga of the season. Arizona State ran a close second with its hire of Herm Edwards. Actually, the hire of Edwards was only a little weird — he hasn’t coached since 2008, and he seems unlikely to exceed the 46-31 career mark that got Todd Graham fired, but whatever — it was the situation he walked into that was odd.

The thing Arizona State seemed most proud to announce was its “restructured ASU football model.” The headline of the press release was “Vision Unveiled, Edwards Takes Helm,” and I sensed some misgivings that this silly announcement of a new coach was getting in the way of an awesome PowerPoint presentation. After getting past the fact that the first verb of the release was written in the wrong tense — the excited author was no doubt so jacked up from a recent TED Talk on leadership that he couldn’t differentiate between singular and plural — the exciting news was delivered in the nut graph.

“The department's New Leadership Model will be similar to an NFL approach using a general manager structure. It's a collaborative approach to managing the ASU football program that includes sport and administrative divisions, which will operate as distinct, but collective units focused on elevating all aspects of Sun Devil Football. This structure will allow the department to form a multi-layered method to the talent evaluation and recruiting processes, increase its emphasis on both student-athlete and coach development and retention, and provide a boost in resource allocation and generation.”

One request: Could someone remove the keyboard from the author of the above paragraph and smash it into multi-layered bits?

I’m not saying winning football games is easy, but it ain’t that complicated. You find teenagers who are bigger, faster and stronger than your competitors, and you teach them how to block, tackle, throw and catch better than your competitors. You get players, and you improve them.

The head coach’s biggest job is to put a staff together that can do that job well. That isn’t part of Edwards’ job.

At Arizona State, athletic director Ray Anderson, who used to be Edwards’ agent, decided to retain Graham’s staff and swap head coaches. It’s fair to question whether Edwards has a more significant role than being a motivational speaker. Once you cut through the tortured language of the press release, what this really sounds like is an athletic director who wants to treat his department’s revenue-generating engine as his personal fantasy football team. With a puppet coach, Anderson can pretend to be a football GM.

Suddenly, Tennessee’s leaders don’t seem so delusional.