IRVING -- As always this time of year when there isn't headline-spawning controversy, the Big 12's bottom line finds a way to make news.
The success of a conference is not about the money, as commissioner Bob Bowlsby points out. It's just an inescapable part of college athletics. If it can't buy love, as McCartney noted, it can buy stability, as the Big 12 has found.
"Money is not the most important thing," said West Virginia president Gordon Gee, the outgoing chairman of the Big 12 board of directors, "but it's certainly ahead of what's in second place.