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MORGANTOWN -- At 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, the email arrived from the Big 12 Conference and while all around it sports pundits were writing and speaking hundreds of thousands of words about Colorado's jump from the Pac-12 (minus how many now?) to the Big 12 (plus how many now?), the conference wasted no words in its pronouncement that the Buffaloes were its newest member.
"They're back!"
That was it. Two words (OK, three, if you want to consider the contraction two words).
That was all commissioner Brett Yormark had to say.
Rest assured there will be more to say later this weekend as the shadow of the Big 12 Conference continues to spread across our land much as the early morning sunshine grows across the nation from east to west.
They speak of the reach of a conference as its footprint and for the Big 12 it has gone from a diminutive gymnast's size 5 to a Shaq-like size 16.
Big 12 football reaching from the Everglades to the Rocky Mountains; from great plains of Utah, to the rolling wooded hills of West Virginia. The conference plays in EST, CST, MST time and you know it is not far off before the splintering of the Pac-12 adds the PST.
On Saturdays you will be able to sit in your living room and stream football games from 9 a.m. California time to midnight and beyond in the east … all live.
Over time, I have been critical of the new Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark for his emphasis on entertainment beyond competition, for his show biz and marketing approach to his league, but there can be no doubt that someday, somewhere the Big 12 will be erecting a statue of him as he took a league teetering upon extinction and patched it together and sold it as America's league.
Think back a couple of years when the word seeped out that Oklahoma and Texas were leaving the Big 12.
That was like the Yankees and the Dodgers leaving major league baseball.
It was as if in old days Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck had left Disney, Lucy left Desi or Edith left Archie.
The Big 12 was looking as though it would be McDonald's without the Big Mac or Arby's without the meat.
He jumped in and quickly worked out a lucrative TV deal, setting a standard so high that the Pac-12 could not match it and the ACC only yearned to have gotten.
OK in this conference no longer stood for Oklahoma, it stood for "All right" and teams lined up to fill the void left by the exit of the Sooners and Longhorns. If two had left, four would replace them in Cincinnati, Central Florida, Houston and Brigham Young.
And they were reaching out to Arizona and Arizona State and Connecticut and Gonzaga … and, obviously, Colorado … crisp, clear Colorado.
It was as if they were buying the John Denver songbook, from "Take Me Home (Country Roads) to "Rocky Mountain High".
And Sanders came along with the deal, proving all that glitters is not gold but it is certainly Neon.
The Big 12 is where Colorado belonged all along. I go all the way back with them to 1960 (which is a year now you can read about in history, it being so long ago.) It was part of a wonderful Big Eight when it was Oklahoma and Texas and Nebraska and all of them were in the Top 10 in football, when I would see games as a student at Missouri, along with Iowa State and Kansas and Kansas State and, yes, Colorado.
Talk about a survivalist conference, one that could over the years lose Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, Missouri, Nebraska and remain relevant, evolving just man has over the centuries.
I was fortunate enough to cover the "Game of the Century" back in 1972 when Nebraska beat Oklahoma and saw college football not only at its highest level but put on display by rivals as bitter as even WVU and Pitt.
As Colorado comes into the league at a time when the college game has gone professional, it is not your old Big 12 (or Big Eight, for that matter). It offers so much variety, so much history, so many yesterday and so many tomorrows.
Basketball, football, women's basketball, baseball, golf, wrestling, soccer …. it is a sports wonderland and just beginning to stretch its legs again.
Selfishly, a regional, eastern conference such as the ACC or SEC would be more comfortable for WVU, but this has become an exciting adventure into a new era, as wild west as Colorado. It will be difficult to keep up, yes, as WVU has found, but if the right leadership decisions are made along the way West Virginia is capable of being a vibrant and winning part of this new age of college athletics.