Big 10 Countdown #11 - Can the Huskers Come Out and Play?

For a few days, most of America knew what was going to go down on June 11th of last year.  It was a highly anticipated event. 

 Of course, I'm talking about the eagerly anticipated movie premiere of the A-Team.  No?  What else, then?  I don't remember much because I was too hungover from celebrating Colorado's jump to the Pac 11 (at the time) the day before.  Oh yeah, the Big Ten officially asked the Huskers if they would like to play in their backyard.  And before Jim Delany finished the previous sentence, Tom Osborne and Harvey Perlman jumped into their SUV, roached the tires in the Big 12 parking lot and headed east.

Obviously, joining the Big Ten was a big deal, but Husker fans were ready for it.  It was discussed ad nauseum on every media outlet and social network available to them.  What wasn't expected, however, was the verbal beat down that both Harvey and T.O. gave at the Regents meeting.  First up was Perlman, who laid it all out and revealed much about the Big 12 meetings:

"I said there’s only one way that you can fully commit long-term to a conference, and that is that you assign the media rights to your athletic contests to the conference for the long-term. And I asked were the members willing to do that? The University of Texas made it clear they were not able to do that."

Next up, was Osborne who, not surprisingly, had one of the most memorable lines from the meeting: 

"One school leaving does not break up a conference.  Two schools does not. Six schools leaving breaks up a conference."

Next thing you know, Husker die-hards are cranking up the Interwebs and looking on FlightTracker to see when Delany would land in Lincoln.  

To be sure, it was a monumental day for Husker fans and arguably college football.  The landscape was shifting and NU made sure they got on more solid ground.  In retrospect, not much more happened than that, but who out there really thinks the Big 12 will stick together or that the Big Ten is done annexing?  I thought so.

The best part about it for me was that I was in Des Moines when all of this was going down.  Not only was my Blackberry burning up due to all of the Twitter refreshes, but I was decked out in Husker gear.  Let me tell you, THAT was a conversation starter at dinner.  'Clones fans were pissed off at me and Hawk fans welcomed me.