Though Sooners' relocation may be exciting, it remains an unfortunate and unneeded decision

So this broke the other day.

Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark’s looking into selling the conference’s naming rights.

They’ve done it with bowls forever: the John Hancock Bowl, the Outback Bowl, the Poulan Weedeater Bowl, the Carquest Bowl, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, to name a few of what seems like hundreds.

Why not take the next step?

According to Yahoo’s Ross Dellinger, Yormark believes such a deal could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars over some nondescript timeline.

The single corporate entity named as a possibility thus far is Allstate Insurance.

So …

The Allstate 12 Conference?

It sounds ridiculous, but you’ve got to admit, it’s one thing the Big 10 and SEC likely can’t do, for those conferences’ names should be too valuable, too enmeshed in the culture, to be mucked with.

A better idea might be to rename the conference before selling naming rights, letting it become something like this:

The Allstate Great American Conference.

It’s a thought because the Big 12 hasn’t been the real Big 12 in a long, long time.

It is the conference schools leave, even if they they shouldn’t, not the conference schools join. 

It hasn’t really been the Big 12 since Nebraska and Colorado left in 2011 and Missouri and Texas A&M left in 2012.

Even with the return of Colorado, the conference, whatever it’s called, will include just five of the old Big Eight universities — Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Colorado — that originated it, and just two of the old Southwest Conference universities, Baylor and Texas Tech, that joined those Big Eight schools in 1996.

It deserves a new name.

But maybe not one that will produce this sentence from, say, ESPN play-by-play man Chris Fowler.

“Welcome to the Dr. Pepper Allstate 12 championship game here at AT&T Stadium, now here’s today’s Alamo Rent A Car starting lineups.

Sheesh.

It’s no coincidence the Big 12’s looking to reinvent itself, or sell the naming rights to its reinvention. It’s doing it because Oklahoma and Texas have left for the SEC, a move that becomes officially official on July 1.

Two weeks, basically.

Two weeks after that?

SEC football media days, July 15-18, in Dallas.

I am not excited.

When the games come, perhaps:

Tennessee in Norman Sept. 21, OU at Missouri Nov. 9, Alabama in Norman Nov. 23, Sooners in Baton Rouge Nov. 30. Oh, yeah, Texas at the Cotton Bowl Oct. 12.

Until then, forgive me, I’ll wistfully recall a once-great conference OU should never have wanted to leave.

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