Horns247 Board

I hear you Bobby, but I think you forget a couple of things. Ideology aside, Ken Starr is a well thought of attorney. I doubt Baylor would be embarking on building a new stadium if there was a chance that the grant of rights wasn't a very strong set of handcuffs. Do you remember Prince changing his name? That was because he had a grant of rights signed over to Sony I believe. i don't think Texas is willing to change it's name for conference affiliation.

Also, according to the Omaha paper, Nebraska would have committed to the Big 12 if Texas would be willing to sign a grant of rights to the conference. Powers said that would take some time if he could even get it done, so the Nebraska President said we have to go to the Big 10.

There's about a zero percent chance of A&M being able to block Texas to the SEC.

Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, etc. would just laugh at that.

Obviously you have never seen Aggy boycott power.
It is like Occupy Wall Street on steroids.

If the SEC's decision is based on an online poll, Texas could be left out.

All the SEC school tell texas a$m to shut-up and go stand in the corner

This whole thing is not a precursor to disbanding of the Big XII. Its the precursor to an 8 team playoff.

This move all but signals ACC out of the big boy conference picture. The problem for a long time has been two fold (i) how to split the money, (ii) we have five conferences and it doesn't fit neatly.

Four conferences - and the Big XII sealed their place as one of those 4; they already had, but what really just happened was the likelihood that ACC is not one of them.

Big XII adds two teams, creates two divisions. Four conferences have conference playoff games (the semi-finals of the playoffs). Pac and Big winners meet in the Rose and SEC and Big XII meet in the Champions bowl for the semis. those two winners meet for the marbles.

Every move that has been made in the last year or so is moving toward that end . . . with the exception of ND to ACC. In my view, the problem with all of this is ND. ND wanted to keep their independence and the only way for that to work was to prevent the above so they made the preemptive move to the ACC to try and disrupt the locomotive from getting more steam. Today's move gets it back on track.

The next move is FSU to Big XII

Would be awesome but never going to happen. sigh.

I would not mind mind seeing a Pac 16 south of Texas, TTU, OU, OSU, ASu, Zona, UCLA, USC,and Cal

I wonder where Tuxedo Yoda thinks the Big 12 goes with expansion.

I think that is directionally correct. More and more dollars in college football will be coming from the expanded playoffs and the TV money they engender. But, you still have to address the two huge discrepancies in regards to the econmics of the regular season:

1. The Pac-12, Big Ten, and (soon) SEC all have cable networks that they OWN. Texas does NOT OWN the Longhorn Network. Texas is merely a paid employee of the LHN, which is completely owned by ESPN. The reason this is important is that the other 3 conferences are expanding in order to capture markets to grow their conference networks. Because they OWN their networks, they have an incentive to grow revenues. By contrast, Texas is a $15MM per year paid employee of the LHN. Whether or not the LHN grows or shrinks is irrelevant to Texas, because we'll get paid $15MM regardless. This leads to point #2

2. There is a growing gulf between the revenues of the SEC and Big Ten schools and the rest of the nation in Tier 1 and 2 revenues, as well as Tier 3 revenues (see #1 above). This growing gulf will lead to differences in power between the Big Ten and SEC schools and the Big XII schools not named Texas. To put numbers to it, every time the Big Ten expands, it gets to renegotiate its Tier 1 and 2 contracts. By adding TV market geographies to BOTH increase Tier 1 and 2, as well as expand the BTN (tier 3), it's a double revenue increase for them. As the article above shows, the Big Ten is looking at $40MM+ per school by 2020, and growing. By contrast, the Big XII schools are looking at $20MM per year over the next 12 years, and are NOT growing unless they expand or OWN their own cable network. However, since Texas already has the LHN, there won't be any Big XII Network of any value without Texas' inventory being part of it. Net-net: There is an ever growing gulf between the other 3 conferences and the Big XII and ACC, AND the financial incentives for further future expansion all favor these 3 conferences.

So, while I agree that the expanded playoffs will be a HUGE revenue driver for college football in general, you have to look at the regular season economics and see that there is a growing "haves" and "have nots" problem, and if the "Haves" possess more money than the "have nots" surely that wealth will translate into power when the playoff revenues get divided as well.

Net-net: I think Dodds has done a good job up to this point of accomplishing the twin goals of keeping the Big XII viable and maximizing Texas' economics throughout the realignment process, but I can't help but think that there is one more battle to fight on this front, and it will force Texas to make a hard decision or two much sooner than expected.

Why would Texas go join the PAC12 when the BIG12 in its current state is stronger top to bottom? It would make more sense to just add Clemson, Florida State, Pittsburgh and Louisville.

Big 12 East: Pitt, Louisville, WVU, Clemson, FSU, Kansas State, Kansas
Big 12 West: Texas, OU, Oklahoma State, Baylor, Tech, TCU, Iowa State

The teams sound alright, but time and travel wouldn't be. I've lived in LA twice and I can tell you that the time differece would be a killer. Die-hard fans might learn to live with it, but a lot of the fanbase would lose out. When you read the Sunday morning paper, how often do you get the late night write-ups? Football you might rationalize some, but travel times for the other sports have to be considered.

Most of those schools are covered by major airlines. I would bet all are easier to get to the KSU is currently.