By Steve Brawner

Frank Broyles is looking pretty smart right now.

Broyles as University of Arkansas athletic director engineered the program’s move in 1991 from the scandal-plagued Southwest Conference into the rock-solid Southeastern Conference. Recent shifts along college athletics’ fault lines have been a reminder of the wisdom of that decision.

To summarize 19 years into a single paragraph, the demise of the Southwest Conference led to the creation of the Big 12, a forced marriage between the SWC’s Texas schools and what was then the Big Eight, which featured traditional football powerhouses Oklahoma and Nebraska. That marriage almost ended earlier this month as Texas, Oklahoma, and several other schools nearly succumbed to the flirtations of the West Coast-based Pac-10. Colorado did divorce the Big 12 for the Pac-10, while Nebraska left the Big 12 for another conference. The Big 12 survived only by offering Texas a deal it couldn’t refuse — including its own cable network — and when Texas stayed in, so did everyone else.

The NCAA requires conferences to have 12 teams in order to host a lucrative conference championship game, so it would not be surprising if the 10-team Big 12 approaches the University of Arkansas. If it does, Arkansas should politely turn up its snout at the offer. University officials have told reporters that it will do exactly that.

I have not always felt this way, and some do not feel that way now. Speaking purely from a fan’s perspective rather than a financial perspective, which is, of course, the only one that counts, the Big 12 seems a more natural fit. Arkansas has a history with the Texas schools, and the state of Texas is a fertile recruiting ground that has produced some of the greatest Razorbacks. Meanwhile, Arkansas has always felt a little late to the party in the SEC. A historical rivalry with Ole Miss hasn’t really been rekindled despite the defection of Arkansas’ homegrown coach, Houston Nutt, to the Rebels, and efforts to concoct a rivalry with LSU have yet to take root.

There are geographic and cultural differences between Arkansas and the rest of the SEC as well. Stuck by itself on the northwest corner of the SEC map, Fayetteville is by far the least southeastern of all the Southeastern Conference cities. Outside of the Delta flatlands, the state’s history and culture are as much Western as Southern, as much pioneer as Confederate, and definitely more Oklahoma than Oxford, Miss.

But even more so, we’re not Texas, and that’s one of many reasons the SEC is the best place for Arkansas. It’s clear that the University of Texas now dominates the Big 12 Conference, or what’s left of it. In the SEC, no one school has that kind of power, and unlike the Big 12, everyone shares equally in the profits. While most other major conferences have been scrambling for months either to pick up schools or keep the ones they have, the well-funded SEC has been remarkably cohesive. It courted Texas A&M but didn’t beg, and when the Aggies decided to stay put in the Big 12, the SEC responded with a collective shrug. Few things in life are certain, and nothing in the big business of college athletics is, but no school appears to be looking to secede from the SEC. The Big 12’s biggest schools, though pacified now, seem eager to find a better deal.

Football fans in the South have long insisted their conference is the country’s best on the field, which probably is usually true, but one thing is certain, at least for now: It is the most stable off the field. No school wants to leave the party, and no school is the life of the party. Best of all, in the SEC, Arkansas doesn’t have to mess with Texas.

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Steve Brawner is a freelance journalist, a former newspaper editor, and a former aide to former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller. His e-mail address is brawnersteve@mac.com