The Big 12 tournament finally gets underway tonight as the bottom four teams in the conference face off for an opportunity to lose in the next round against Missouri and Kansas. Below is completely random list of things that I will be looking forward to seeing through the entire tournament. Let me know what things you will be looking forward to seeing.

Watching Keiton Page rain down three pointers for the final time

The incredulous look on Steve Moore's face every single time he is called for a foul

Royce White attempting free throws

Iowa State as a team possibly shooting 40 three pointers in a game

Markel Brown throwing down a crazy highlight reel dunk

Seeing if Perry Jones III shows up or not

Angel Rodriguez throwing a couple of passes that make Frank Martin about explode on sideline

Seeing how many, if any, Texas A&M fans shows up for their final Big 12 tournament

Checking out how many Iowa State fans make the trip to KC

Seeing how big the attendance is in general for Wednesday's opening round games

Watching J'Covan Brown if he gets on a roll shooting

The atmosphere inside and outside Sprint Center if Kansas & Missouri do actually meet in finale

Flip Pressey shooting some NBA range threes that make Frank Haith want to break something

Witnessing Tyshawn Taylor take over game right when KU needs it

Melvin Ejim getting at least one traveling call against him as seems to happen every time I watch him

Fans reaction to every foul call in a possible KU v Missouri matchup

Watching Marcus Denmon's final Big 12 tournament performance

The ticket prices for a Missouri v Kansas finale

Frank Martin's reactions on sideline, still entertaining every game

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The best way to kick start a party is to throw a little Michael Jackson on the iPod. Once the King of Pop starts playing, everyone's off their butts, dancing and having a good ol' time.

So in celebration of Michael Jackson's birthday, after The Jump we'll look at a Jacko theme songs for each of the Big 12 basketball programs.

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The Big 12 has released the 2012 men's basketball conference schedule and WOW! do I love the new format.

As you know, for the life of the conference as we knew it, schools played each other school in their division twice and the schools in the other division once. So the best two teams in the conference - say Kansas and Texas - might only play each other once a season, and depending on how the schedule fell, the home team would have a distinct advantage.

But with the departure of Colorado and Nebraska, the conference decided to schedule each school to play the other nine twice per season, in home-and-home affairs.

Now the conference is balanced. Conference seeding is no longer dependant on scheduling, as no team will have the distinct home court advantage they might have had with the old system.

The new scheduling also allows for rivalries to build. Say a game between two old South division and North division opponents gets a little testy or one team wins on a buzzer beater.  With the old system there was a slight chance the two would meet in the conference tourney, but now there is redemption to be had.

All in all the change is great for the conference, will allow rivalries to build and just generally make the conference stronger come tournament time.

Sports Illustrated's Pablo Torre fleshed out Gary Parrish and Jeff Goodman's initial report on the dead Houston AAU backer and investor, David Salinas, yesterday. In addition to adding two coaches to the original nine listed by CBSSports.com, Torre puts dollars by everyones names. Here's a table summarizing the new findings.

This is a huge deal. Accounting for non-basketball related investors, the total amount of money on the line here is "several tens of millions of dollars" according to Torre. 

BallinIsAHabit's Rob Dauster did some legwork and found that at least nine of the eleven coaches had recruits who were at one time in Salinas' AAU program. While ESPN.com's Andy Katz says the NCAA has no interest in investigating this situation, CBSSports.com confirmed that the NCAA is investigating (even if it's only "looking into" the situation for now).

The Houston Chronicle and The Daily's Dan Wolken independently confirmed stories that at least two coaches were explicitly told that investing with Salinas would have players steered towards their respective schools.

To state the obvious: that's a major NCAA infraction. Now, the money is outrageously high for a fairly paltry number of recruits at this point, but I get the feeling we're only scratching the surface of this story.

Tomorrow, I'll have a look at how this could affect the Big 12 coaches implicated.

Well it's that time of year where if your baseball team stinks you don't have much to cheer for in sports unless you like soccer and/or NASCAR. Football is closing in but still over a month away and basketball is still an excruciatingly long time away. With that being said it seems like a good time to have another big12hoops.com conference call just to get some sports talk going. Naturally we will discuss Big 12 basketball but where it's the middle of July we'll jump around the sports world quite a bit more than when the season is in full force. Below are the questions we cover this week after the jump..

(1.) We will start with a Big 12 basketball question. Much has been said about the new round robin schedule where now every team in the conference plays each other twice. What are your general thoughts on this topic and what is the best record we could expect the conference regular season champion to finish with?

(2.) There are four new coaches in the Big 12 this year: Frank Haith at Missouri, Billy Kennedy at Texas A&M, Billy Gillispie at Texas Tech & Lon Kruger at Oklahoma. Looking into your crystal ball out of those coaches which ones, if any, do you expect to still be coaching in the Big 12 conference in five years?

(3.) Iowa State basketball this year: Ticking time bomb?

(4.) Two part question here: Did you watch the U.S. Women's World Cup finale? Is mainstream media making a point to try and push soccer onto the U.S.?

(5.) College football this year will have a new look with Nebraska in the Big 10 and Colorado in the Pac-10. What teams and players in general are you looking forward to watching this year in college football?

(6.) We may have asked this question before in a previous conference call but oh well. Which team in any sport, assuming there is one, do you just not like for whatever reason and just cannot find it in your heart to cheer for them?

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"‘A lot of coaches got (expletive),' said one college coach."

CBSSports.com's Gary Parrish and Jeff Goodman quietly dropped a bomb on the basketball world last night. I suggest reading the whole post, but here's a quick recap. David Salinas was the founder of a Houston summer basketball program and an investment advisor for many college basketball coaches, including Texas Tech's Billy Gillispie and Baylor's Scott Drew. According to reports, some of the coaches had upwards of seven figures invested with Salinas, who was found dead. 

Goodman tweeted this morning that he "just spoke to a coroner in Galveston; [the coroner] said autopsy hasn't been performed yet on David Salinas."

Adding to the drama, Kentucky Sports Radio's Matt Jones tweeted a Houston radio show host claims that Gillispie was one of the last to see Salinas alive and "was angry" in his office last week. 

Apparently, Salinas was running a Ponzi scheme that involved many of college basketball's top coaches. While the story came out rather quietly (a blog post, really?), and didn't receive a lot of initial interest (minus The Bylaw Blogand Dan Wolken), I have a feeling this is far from over. 

"One of the coaches involved called CBSSports.com late Sunday and offered comment. He asked that his name not be used but said, ‘We're not concerned about the NCAA right now. We're just scared we got Madoffed.'"

Needless to say, we'll have more as this story develops.