Go toe toe? heck when this all went down in 2010 it can be argued the Big 12 was the best football conference at that time, certainly the deepest. The Big 12 got to good, or to big for their britches and the SEC and Big 10 didn't like it. Other leagues had a very hard time recruiting Texas, the Big 12 basically had the state locked up. Even all the northern schools had around 25 Texans on their rosters. I think from 200 4to 2014 or so, whatever version of the Big 12 there was, was a top 2 league in the country.Totally agree, in reality we shouldn't do it. But I harbor a ton of resentment to the 4 original defectors from the B12. I view those as the first dominoes to this whole mess. When you look back at the original B12 schools, that was a conference that should have been able to go toe to toe with the B1G and SEC, but the schools refused to work well together and decided to take their ball and leave instead. For that, I'll never forgive any of them.