The Iowa State Daily exists for two reasons: to inform and to spark discussion.

For sports, my job is the latter.

The sports section hasn’t had a full-time columnist for as long as anyone working here now can remember. Now, it’s up to me to be that voice each week, to react to ISU sports and look ahead to what’s next.

And coming off a summer in which the Big 12 nearly collapsed — and by extension, Iowa State’s athletic viability — it’s important to remember that what the Big 12 has become was shaped by years of tradition dating back to the days of the Big 8 or the Southwest Conference.

College sports in general is steeped in it. And the Big 12 was, and still is with its remaining 10 members, a huge part of football and basketball traditions in this country.

Kansas basketball. Oklahoma, Texas and Nebraska football. Oklahoma State and Iowa State wrestling. All a part of the Big 12 and its legacy.

The conference is also littered with long-standing rivalries dating back to the early 1900s.

Iowa State had been in the same conference as Nebraska — among others — for more than 100 years until Nebraska packed its bags and headed to the more profitable Big Ten.

And now a key piece of the history, of the rivalries, of everything Big 12, is gone.

It’s true that financially, Nebraska made the right decision. Same for Colorado, for that matter. They both will get a far bigger piece of the financial pie in their new conferences than they would’ve in the Big 12.

And while Colorado doesn’t leave behind a storied past in the Big 12, it did kind of abandon the conference that helped make it well-known nationally.

Yet because of the Buffaloes’ struggles more recently, it’s more understandable that they would look for a new start in a new conference.

But Nebraska came within a few seconds and a bad call or two from winning the Big 12 in football last year. The Cornhuskers have a solid team that will be a top 25 program at the least for the foreseeable future. So it’s obvious the move was purely for money.

And that’s a shame.

I hate that in sports today, whether it’s college or the pros, money dominates absolutely everything. If you don’t have money in college athletics, you can’t recruit as well, you can’t have the best facilities, and by extension, you can’t win consistently.

The traditions are really all that there is left to keep sacred in college football and basketball. They’re what keep fans tied to the school they attended or simply have loved their whole lives. They’re what brings so much passion.

Nebraska just shuffled that all aside.

And now you’ll hear Nebraska and its fans say how they’ll form new rivalries with the likes of Iowa and Michigan in the Big Ten. But I seriously doubt any rivalry they create will ever mean as much as those they had in the Big 12.

Honestly, I’m going to miss seeing Iowa State play Nebraska and Colorado. Colorado because that usually meant a win, and Nebraska because it felt so sweet when Iowa State beat them in football. But that goes back once again to the tradition of Nebraska being a perennial football power, and Iowa State definitely not being one.

At the end of the day, there really isn’t much we can do about it. But for you Nebraska fans who have convinced yourselves this was the right move in the long run, remember this: Nebraska sold its souls for the almighty dollar, and what goes around comes around.