AP

It’s a familiar situation in every failed romance.

Guy meets girl. Guy likes girl. Guy and girl go out for a while, until one or the other determines the relationship has no future. Guy and girl break up.

Then, in an unfortunate twist of fate, guy and girl run into one another a couple of days later.

Can you say awkward?

Brandon Kinnie and Nebraska would like to avenge last season’s Big 12 championship game loss to Texas.
Amy Gutierrez / Associated Press

Yes, breaking up is hard to do, as the football programs of the Big 12 have discovered. In June, Colorado accepted an invitation to join the Pac-10. A day later, Nebraska announced its intention to bolt for the Big Ten, beginning in 2011. The other 10 schools ultimately decided to stick together.

For now, though, all 12 remain linked in the throes of competition, even as officials at lame-duck Nebraska and Colorado plan their exits. It’s as if that aforementioned guy and girl had to work together for a year after ending their romance.

The likelihood that there will be some bitterness is pretty high.

“We might get a bad reception, and if so, it’s not a big deal,” Nebraska defensive tackle Jared Crick said. “Whatever people want to say, they can say, but as long as we’re doing our job on the field, that’ll speak for itself.”

“I guess we could have a target on our backs, since we are in our last season in the Big 12,” receiver Niles Paul added. “But we’re not really concerned with that.”

At the league’s media days in July, the dominant message delivered by players and coaches is that football is football. Once the ball is put into play on Saturdays, the game doesn’t care who’s staying or who’s going. It doesn’t care how many teams are aligned with the conference today.

But the other 50,000 people in the building aren’t playing football, and often they do care.

Players at Nebraska and Colorado say they’re used to hearing taunts on the road already.

“People have talked about how we might get some heat from fans, but we always do anyway,” Colorado receiver Scotty McKnight said.

“Obviously you’re heckled and the fans talk stuff to you all the time,” Colorado cornerback Jalil Brown said. “So to have it change from, ‘Hey, you suck!’ to ‘Hey, you’re scared, you have to move conferences!’ is not going to make much difference at all.”

But it will be different, some players conceded. Some lamented the loss of certain rivalry games, and said it could be strange standing across the field from the Huskers and Buffs for the final time as conference foes.

Same goes for the players at Nebraska and Colorado, who weren’t exactly consulted on any of the conference realignment decisions.

“It will be different. Just playing for the last time in the Big 12, there’s some emotion there,” McKnight said. “We’ve been in the Big 8 and the Big 12 for so long. It’ll be a cool experience to start a new journey with what will be the Pac-12, but we’ve also accomplished so much in the Big 12, and we’re leaving all that behind. So it’s kind of sad.”

As the conference was undergoing its summer face-lift, the league’s coaches had no idea what might happen. Some intimated they learned as much or more through media reports as they did from talking to their own athletic directors.

Mostly, they just felt powerless.

“It’s one of those things in your career where you never think you’d be sitting there in June — never — looking at anything the magnitude of what was happening,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said. “It was crazy, and you have no control over it. You lose a football game and your guts are ripped out. Sunday morning when you wake up, you’ve probably had two hours of sleep. But you know what to do: brush yourself off, roll your sleeves up and say, ‘Let’s change this, let’s fix this.’

“With (the conference realignment), you’d get up and feel like that, but you couldn’t do anything.”

That’s why it will be a relief for coaches and players when they can actually take to the field — the one area they can control. Nebraska’s players, for one, are hell-bent on avenging last year’s one-point loss to Texas in the Big 12 championship game.

“A conference championship is a conference championship, no matter if it’s the last year and we’re trying to prove a point or if it’s the first year and we’re trying to prove a point,” Crick said. “If we can get a conference championship, we’re going to be happy no matter what.”

On the flip side, around the league, nobody wants to see Nebraska win the title. For them, the motivation may actually be greater. Players on the remaining 10 teams spoke admirably of the respect they have for the Husker team, but they also recognized the awkward appearance if Nebraska won the league on its way out.

When your girl walks out the door, you don’t exactly want her leaving with your flat-screen TV, do you?

“If they want to leave, they can leave,” Baylor defensive tackle Phil Taylor said. “But I just know that the Big 12 is the best conference in football.”

bcherry@wacotrib.com

757-5714

RELATED SEARCHES

• Year of the Running Back in the Big 12? Don't be surprised
• Big 12 South preview 2010
• Big 12 North preview 2010
• Tribune-Herald 2010 Preseason All-Big 12 Team
• 2010 Big 12 predictions from the Trib sports staff
• The return of Robert Griffin: Baylor's fate rests squarely on his shoulders (and his knee)
• Baylor offensive preview: Griffin's confidence rubs off on teammates
• Baylor defensive preview: Bears have to regroup with stalwarts gone
• Baylor Bears roster, schedule, statistics