Death to the Big 12.

Does that seem harsh?

OK, maybe it’s harsh.

But I’m a Memphian. I want good things for the University of Memphis. And given the way the college football universe is shifting, given the range of possible outcomes, it appears the simplest, safest thing that could happen would be for the Big 12 to blow apart.

I’ll explain in a minute. But first, let me say that the folks at the University of Memphis deserve a lot better than this.

In the past seven years, the university has totally remade its football program. It is now, without argument, the best football program in the state of Tennessee. It has won 65 games and two bowl games in those seven seasons. It has finished in the Top 25 three times. It hosted a wildly successfully “College GameDay” on Beale Street. It is a football program transformed.

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The university’s academic progress is even more impressive. In the past 12 months, Memphis has been ranked among the world’s top universities by two international ranking services. And after years of not being ranked by U.S. News & World Report, Memphis is now No. 126 nationally and is the No. 2 public university in the state.

So Memphis should be celebrating all of the good things it has accomplished, maybe looking around at new opportunities that might arise.

Instead, there is a real possibility that Memphis could get the shaft once again.

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It starts with the news that broke this week — that Texas and Oklahoma are planning to leave the Big 12 for the SEC. The Big 12 had an emergency meeting Thursday evening to discuss this, which Texas and Oklahoma declined to attend. So unless something dramatic happens, those two schools seem bound for greener paydays. 

Which would leave the remaining eight schools in the Big 12 to try and save themselves. The desperate scrambling is already underway. 

Under one scenario, those eight schools would try to find new members. You’d like to think that Memphis might have a chance to get an invite. University officials certainly should update the materials they produced during their previous failed effort to join the conference. Make the case that the program is on the rise. I talked to a college administrator Thursday who said Memphis should align with Cincinnati, UCF and another school and make a pitch to the remaining members of the Big 12. But it’s not entirely clear that Cincinnati and UCF — who seem to be in a relatively better position than Memphis — would be inclined to do that.

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Pete Thamel of Yahoo! Sports is as connected as any reporter when it comes to realignment. He wrote that “the Big 12 will decide how big it wants to get. It has to decide whether to add two, four or six schools. Four seems like the most reasonable number with Cincinnati, UCF, USF, BYU and Boise State the most likely candidates from outside the state of Texas.”

You’ll note that Memphis did not make Thamel’s list.

No, that’s not the list that matters. But you can see the problem, right? The last time around, Memphis wasn’t included as one of the 11 finalists for possible Big 12 expansion. It was an unjustifiable slap in the face.

So, sure, Memphis should gear up for another try, with the understanding that joining this Big 12 — without Texas or Oklahoma — wouldn’t be the triumph that joining the old Big 12 would have been. 

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But if the conference does try to expand, there is at least a reasonable chance it might pick, say, Cincinnati, UCF, BYU and Boise State, leaving Memphis in a badly diminished AAC.

That’s the worst possible scenario. And it gets us back to where we began. The better result for Memphis would be that the Big 12 leftovers accept that the league is deader than dead. Even now, the eight leftover schools are trying to persuade other Power Five conferences to take them. Kansas to the Big Ten, anyone? How about West Virginia to the ACC? If enough schools can bolt, or if the remaining schools come to realize the Big 12 isn’t salvageable, the AAC could then welcome some of them aboard. The AAC has been trying to grow for a couple of years now. This could speed the effort along. 

That would be a dramatically better result for Memphis. The school could continue to flourish in a bolstered AAC. It wouldn’t be the transformative move that Memphis fans have wanted for decades. But Memphis would be better off tomorrow than it is today.

So here’s to your implosion, Big 12.

There’s nobody to blame but yourself.

If you had been able to keep Texas and Oklahoma happy, none of this would have happened.

It’s time to kiss your conference goodbye.