the state, as opposed to the university. It is a very powerful state and will only get more powerful in the future. Baylor, Tech, and even TCU are all very strong, powerful schools with wealthy, well-connected alumni. The alumni of the Texas schools aren't anywhere near as spread out as the alumni of Big Ten schools (because unlike Big Ten grads, they aren't dying to get out of the states in which their schools are located). But that has the effect of concentrating their power in Texas.

I don't know that I'd go long on the Big Ten, a conference with an admitted demographic problem. Their alumni are very powerful now. That power is a product of their devotion to their schools, which itself is due at least in part to the fact that they grew up in Ohio, or Michigan, or Illinois, or Indiana, or Wisconsin, surrounded by that atmosphere. But those alumni keep leaving, so it's really hard to know whether their kids and their kids' kids will have the same devotion to those schools. I suspect they won't, as those kids won't grow up in those places and probably won't attend those schools.