Houston Chronicle reporting both Texas and Oklahoma have reached out to SEC about joining conference
This story just broke a few minutes ago and the only source is currently paywalled but Houston Chronicle football reporter Brent Zwerneman just tweeted out that both Texas & Oklahoma are looking to join the SEC.
Now THAT would be a super-conference. Whoa.
Houston Chronicle exclusive: Texas, Oklahoma reach out to SEC about joining conference https://t.co/tw2Qm3yeoj via @houstonchron
— Brent Zwerneman (@BrentZwerneman) July 21, 2021
Can you guys be pals and drag KSU to your party? We don't offer much other than being pretty nice people. The stadium has been renoed and is pretty awesome for a smaller school. Manhattan is a treat of a college town. We also tend to know off the conference favorites quite often, so that could maybe sweeten the deal a bit.
The Big Ten's addition of Rutgers and Maryland looks worse and worse every year.
Delany is such a *******
Delany wanted the NYC, Washington DC markets, teams be damned.
Shocked he didn't also get the Boston-area.
NYC/MD foothold prob a plus for basketball recruiting; given the options, honestly not the worst two additions...if we *had* to add 2 teams. (of course, debatable whether we should've added any at all).
This makes no sense for UT
1) UT makes the most money in CFB today and they have their own TV network. Why share with another group?
2) The B12 isn’t a great football conference and if UT wins out, they are almost guaranteed a playoff spot
3) By all accounts, Texas runs the conference and has the most clout of any school. That probably won’t be the case in the SEC.
I think Texas may be losing or thinks they are losing some clout and are using this “leak” to pressure the B12 to regain it.
I agree with this.
Going back to 1996, the existence of the Big XII was always dependent on one thing: whether Texas wanted the Big XII to exist because it suited their particular desires (at a given point in time).
That's still the case today.
And, frankly, as we approach a 12-team playoff world, I can't believe that the Big XII can't suit Texas' particular desires. Even if OU leaves, Texas will likely still play OU OOC and the conference will be good enough (they can replace OU and, say, Baylor, with, say, Cinci, UCF, USF and Houston) such that Texas is playoff-bound if they win the conference and don't have 2+ total losses.
The playoff proposal is "Top 6 conference Champions automatically in." And even my de-fanged Big XII above is a Top 6 conference - it's at worst Top 5 (behind the SEC, B1G, ACC and Pac-12, but definitely ahead of the AAC and MWC and the others).
That network has a ticking clock on it though. It's easily the biggest boondoggle ESPN has ever been involved with.
I just can't shake the idea that it makes way more sense politically and for Texas to go to the Pac 12 and bring Texas Tech/Kansas/Someone Else with them. The SEC has a culture of "no one school is bigger than the league, and that's why we all make more money than anyone else." You just can't convince me Texas will ever be comfortable in that environment. If Oklahoma wants to stay hitched with Texas, Texas/OU/Ok State/Texas Tech to the Pac 12 still makes more sense than anything else we've heard about.
And while Oklahoma seems more comfortable making the move to the SEC, if the Pac 12 deal was on the table and made very sweet for them and Texas, you have to think they'd rather stick with Texas than risk becoming Arkansas.
Maybe Nebraska, Colorado, or some of the other teams go back to the B12?
What made college football a sports entertainment colossus up through the early ESPN era was the enduring strength of school/regional rivalries of the era, most of which were embodied in conferences.
That framework began falling apart when the BIG invited long-time eastern independent PSU to join the conference, accelerated when the old Big 8 and Southwest Conferences merged in '96, and reached full momentum with the departures of long-time conference rivals to other conferences, breaking up historic rivalries like Nebraska-Oklahoma or Arkansas-Texas.
Those rivalries were generally geographic in character—fans get most passionate about competing against schools in neighboring states, or against in-state schools in the same conference. That's what made the old geographically-based conferences viable. Putting Texas into the SEC or Colorado into the PAC 12 (not to mention Rutgers and MD into the BIG) don't leverage anything beyond TV money.
ND will join the ACC within 3 years. PSU targeted by ACC. Maryland would be the next logical choice followed by WVU. B1G will need to merge with PAC or swallow up some of the remaining Big 12 teams.
Penn State is not leaving to join the ACC. Between what they make with the Big Ten media rights and the AAU consortium funds for research it would be silly for them to make such a decision.
This whole thread is a bunch of hypothetical ideas on illogical scenarios. I do believe that the SEC wants Texas for the AAU connection as well. Their only current members are U of F and Mizzou.
https://www.aau.edu/who-we-are/our-members
The Big Ten has every school in the membership except one....Nebraska which got voted out when it moved to the Big.
https://www.espn.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/26078/nebraska-loses-aau-sta…
At the time Nebraska accepted the Big Ten invitation in 2010, it was a member of the AAU. However, the AAU booted Nebraska on April 26, 2011. Nebraska's formal entry into the Big Ten didn't begin until July 1, 2011. Given that planning for the admittance of Nebraska into the conference had been underway for a year, it was too late for the conference to back out of its invitation after Nebraska was expelled from the AAU.
Nebraska's expulsion from the AAU had nothing to do with its membership in the Big Ten—it stemmed from a dispute over how the AAU determined the metrics governing membership:
"Chancellor Harvey Perlman said that the lack of an on-campus medical school (the Medical Center is a separate campus of the University of Nebraska system) and the AAU's disregarding of USDA-funded agricultural research in its metrics hurt the university's performance in the association's internal ranking system.
In 2010 Perlman stated that had Nebraska not been part of the AAU, the Big Ten Conference would likely not have invited it to become the athletic conference's 12th member."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Universities
I'm quite sure if Texas and Oklahoma jump to the SEC the league would realign the divisions geographically where UT or OU wouldn't face Alabama except in a crossover or league championship game.
At this point, why not just form the super-league for football and leave the rest of the sports out of it? No matter how large the playoff gets, it will generate tons of complaints until there's a system in place to ensure more schedule parity.
Unfortunately, it will impact the sports programs for FBS and mid-majors, as they won't get the huge bribes to get their football teams beaten up for the sake of all their fellow athletes. But it will be a better product overall.
This just speeds up the day when I completely give up caring at all about college football. Sad what the sports become.
This is the pro league forming; no coincidence it happened right after NIL kicked in. They're done with the NCAA.
Sure glad the players aren't getting "screwed" anymore ....
The SEC was ultimately only able to take over the playoff and college football because it had ESPN behind it. ESPN doesn't give a lick about whether the players are real students or not or whether it's really even college football anymore. These brands will sell, even if it's not college football anymore. The cable bubble wound up being the end of college football.
If you had a do-over, you'd have the B1G and the Pac-12 really hold firm in the playoff negotiations back in around 2012 and not turn the whole sport over to the SEC/ESPN. Maybe an impossibility.
Completely agree that ESPN killed college football. The ND deal with NBC didn't help either.
I know I'm just an old sentimental fool, but college football to me was always Oklahoma-Nebraska, Auburn-Alabama, Michigan-OSU, and Army-Navy. I would've given anything to attend any of those games in any given year.
Now, it's all just so much fluff, a million games on TV each week that don't mean anything, and teams that always disappoint.
I will probably be investigated by the feds but I must say that I agree with Putin
If I were Dictator of College Football I'd bring back the old conferences that existed in 1980, go back to polls and bowls determining the national champion, confine all TV commercials to before the game, during halftime, and after the game ends, re-institute the old rules governing offensive holding, and mandate that no coach can be paid more than the university president.
Texas and Oklahoma ought to give Nebraska a call to inquire whether the grass is always greener on the other side.
As I said in the deleted version of this topic; allowing conference championship games was arguably the worst decision the NCAA ever made.
I doubt this will happen, as I guess 11 of 14 SEC schools have to approve the move. But, for fun, let's say it does. Then, for fun, this can happen:
Big Ten adds Notre Dame and Pitt (no one, and I mean no one, is leaving the Big Ten. If the CFP expands, Notre Dame may give up independence in football)
ACC adds West Virginia, UCF, and USF to get to 16 like the SEC and Big Ten
Big 12 adds Cincinnati, Houston, Memphis, SMU, and Tulsa to get to 12
Pac-12 stays the same.
The 16 team conferences go to 4 4 team divisions, play 8 regular season games, have semifinals on the weekend after Thanksgiving with the remainder of the teams playing an additional game, and then the conference championships in football. In basketball, you'd play each team in your division twice and every other team once for a clean 18 game conference schedule.
Don't think this will happen, but it's fun to imagine.
This is an unintended consequence of Div 1 playoff expansion: more at large teams mean you don't need to win the conference to get in. Texas & Oklahoma would rather share revenue with the 14 other teams in the super SEC than 10 other teams in Big 12.
Sadness. Football was my second religion for most of my life. Lost interest in the NFL several years ago (stopped playing fantasy football--which did revive my lagging interest for several years) and havent missed it at all since--love having my Sundays. Now I feel like I cant even turn my phone, computer or television recently and not see another piece of college football crumble--what made college football special has been withering away for some time now--its like watching a slow motion car wreck--very disheartening. I cant have every Saturday and Sunday in the Fall open---my wife will issue honey-do-lists as long as my arm every Friday. A college football environment of the sec and everyone else is just not appealing...
OU and Texas leaving the Big 12 would essentially make that conference a group of 5 conference, perhaps a tad better but not by much. Ok St, Iowa St, WVU and Texas Tech would be the headliners. That's pretty meh. Yeah, ISU is pretty good now but those four teams are never really a serious threat to get to the playoff.
I don't think I saw anyone mention this, but the Big 12's TV contract is coming up for negotiations soon and some of the schools are pissed about how Fox has been handling things. Coincidental that OU and Texas reaching out to the SEC has been "leaked"? Or is it a negotiating ploy with Fox?
Honestly I'd bet that they actually did reach out to the SEC so they have some leverage and a plan B, but they also are totally ok with that information leaking to the public
But it's not just Fox that isn't willing to negotiate early, it's ESPN also. Unless ESPN is pushing this to get UT/OU into the SEC where it will hold all the TV rights in a couple years after outbidding CBS.
UT & OU also already get an outsized share of the Big 12 TV deal.
14 schools split $729M in 2020...OU & Texas would have to add another $100M per year for all SEC schools to continue to get the same amount of money. So, let's look at a 10 year deal...is Texas/OU alone worth a billion dollars over 10 years? If they were. wouldn't FOX & ESPN be more willing to negotiate?
Are we just going to end up with a giant Western and Eastern conference?
This is posturing for a new TV deal
Isn't there a grant of rights in place?