Something noticeable happened a few days ago in the Big 12 Conference. Commissioner Brett Yormark openly said he hoped Texas Tech football would “take care of business” when it played Texas at the end of the season. Yormark said he would be in Austin for the game.
Yormark ditched the diplomatic approach and made himself the villain for Texas Longhorn fans. The message couldn’t be any clearer: There’s no love for Texas from the Big 12 office on the Longhorns’ way out the door to the SEC in 2024.
“The Big 12 isn’t going to do the Texas Longhorns any favors in 2023. We could have figured as much. Nevertheless, we didn’t expect to hear what seemed like favoritism from Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark. We will let you decide if that’s what we got on Wednesday.
“Yormark made strong comments in support of the Red Raiders in a recent speech to Texas Tech faithful.”
No pretense. Yormark is making it plain.
What does any of this have to do with USC? Nothing is being explicitly said, but we can all put two and two together: The Trojans aren’t going to get a whole lot of love from the Pac-12 this year. Even last year, they were jobbed on a terrible roughing-the-passer call against Utah in October which significantly affected the outcome of that game.
If the Trojans want to make the College Football Playoff, they might need to lead games by 10 points in the fourth quarter, so that if one bad call happens, they will still win by three. If they lead by four points in the fourth quarter and one bad call happens, they could lose on a late touchdown.
Here’s more on the Yormark story and the Big 12’s disavowal of neutrality. This ain’t Switzerland, folks: