A little lame duck musing

 Look, I don't know if Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy was kidding or not. He said he was, kinda. Well, maybe. Except ...

Except then he said, kidding aside, that he didn't think it was a good idea to let Texas and Oklahoma sit in on any future Big 12 meetings, seeing how they're abandoning the conference to go to the SEC.

"I mean, if you're strategically in a business meeting, and it's two cellphone companies, I don't want someone in their company in my company," he said at the Big 12 football Media Days this week.

Again, he threw the word "jokingly" in there. But it seemed pretty clear he wasn't joking.

Nor should he have been. Because he's absolutely right.

It's all well and good for Texas and Oklahoma to ditch the Big 12, and for UCLA and USC to bolt the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. Raiding conferences -- even conferences with whom you allegedly have an "alliance," as the Big Ten and Pac-12 supposedly do -- is just how it works now. It's scummy and underhanded, but it's also corporate America. No one ever got to the top of that ladder by playing nice.

Which is why the Pac-12 and Big 12 shouldn't, either.

What they should say to Texas and Oklahoma, and UCLA and USC, is this: OK, so you're still nominally a conference member for a couple more years. But we reserve the right to decide what 'nominally' means. And to us, it means you're lame ducks -- oh, hell, let's call you what you are: carpetbaggers -- without a compelling interest in Big 12/Pac-12 affairs. So you'll be treated as such.

You'll still play a conference schedule. You'll still be eligible for conference titles. But you'll get no say in how we do things.

Seem fair to you?

Does to me.