Horns247 Board

...Nick Saban should've been in the top 10

I was hopeful that no one from Texas would be listed, but of course dipshit Dodds made the list at 8. This is who we are to the rest of the sports world, a chestbeating, mouthbreathing bully with no balls and the insecurities of an aging Hollywood actress. We're rich, and we have a history, but there isn't much else for anyone to talk about right now but our money and our power in the tiny, largely irrelevant, Big 12 sandbox.

"No other athletic director is this powerful because no other conference has a power balance as out of whack as the Big 12. In the SEC, Florida's Jeremy Foley has juice, but he can't steamroll LSU's Joe Alleva or Georgia's Greg McGarity. Even if Delany didn't do such a fine job of keeping the schools rowing in the same direction in the Big Ten, Ohio State's Gene Smith couldn't walk all over Michigan's Dave Brandon or Michigan State's Mark Hollis. But in the Big 12, Texas has outsize power. Oklahoma, run by the extremely capable Joe Castiglione, is the only other Big 12 program even near the same financial neighborhood as Texas. The rest simply serve at Bevo's leisure.

Texas president Bill Powers ultimately makes the decisions, but Dodds does the legwork and makes the recommendations that Powers follows. In 2010, Texas played the Big 12 against the Pac-12 to leverage a deal that paved the way for the Longhorn Network. (It may be the butt of jokes because of its lack of carriage, but it is a lucrative butt of jokes.) In 2011, Dodds and the Longhorns gave some back to the rest of the league by agreeing to equal revenue sharing among Big 12 schools. This was a shrewd move, because while it made Texas look magnanimous and helped solidify the conference, all the action in 2010 had eliminated any possibility of a potentially larger revenue share like the one the Big Ten will have after its next deal or the one the SEC will have after its network is up and running. Because Texas already partnered with ESPN for the Longhorn Network and then the league sold most of its rights to ESPN and Fox, the idea of a conference network was a non-starter. While its conference rivals will always be free to start their own networks -- and some already have -- the one at Texas will always be bigger, shinier and more lucrative."

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-football/news/20130306/most-powerful-people-college-sports/#ixzz2Mn8upZYT