Without coming right out and saying it, even B12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby appears to be endorsing a conference title game and conference network Leadership, Major, leadership.
Really interesting article by BYU's SB Nation page. They used the Freedom of Information Act to look at correspondence between the public universities regarding potential expansion. It's believed seven of the 10 schools favor expansion. But Big 12 bylaws call for a super majority vote of 75 percent (so at least eight schools) to make a major change. Texas is believed to be influencing Texas Tech's and Texas Christian's decisions to also be reluctant to expansion. Texas Tech has long fallen in line with Texas. Both are public universities that have been in the same league together since 1956, when they were in the Southwest Conference. Texas and Texas Tech were founding members of the Big 12 in 1996. TCU is believed to be following Texas' lead because the conference's power broker reportedly helped the Horned Frogs get into the Big 12 four years ago. A little bit. We knew that those three institutions were leaning against expansion for a little while. TCU, as a private institution, is not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, but Texas and Texas Tech are. We asked both schools for every email sent from the AD or President's Office from a Big 12 expansion candidate (BYU, Memphis, UCF, USF, Houston, Cincinnati, UConn) over the past year (through April 8th, 2016). Cincinnati was the only program to email Texas Tech during that span. Cincinnati, Memphis and Houston all emailed Texas. It is possible the Houston correspondence had nothing to do with athletics or expansion, but it is pretty unlikely that was the case for Cincinnati or Memphis. Cincinnati wrote multiple times, Memphis on Dec 14, 2015. Here's what it looks like: Link Spoiler http://www.vanquishthefoe.com/2016/5/3/11576606/byu-football-big-12-expansion-texas-tcu-memphis
Nice find thanks for posting... Everyone already new Texas was still huddled in a cave mumbling "my precious".
So putting together some tidbits from the quoted Cincy article and Chip Brown piece... Not sure why anyone would expect Texas to jump on any expansion or network ideas. Doesn't sound like the Boren or the Big 12 has even put together a compelling argument for either as of yet. Maybe they have and we'll hear more in the upcoming meetings but if the quotes above are true, I don't blame Texas for holding off or even opposing change at the very moment.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Since March, B12 ADs have seen scheduling models for future that include 8 and 9 conf games and a 16 team league.</p>— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) <a href="https://twitter.com/dennisdoddcbs/status/727606690665791488">May 3, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The call for expanding to 12 is basically that it's called the big 12 so there should be 12 teams. I get that but I don't think there are any practical benefits. I don't like the idea of losing the round robin schedule and going back to playing half of the conference ever 2 years but an additional non-conference game would be nice. I don't think the teams we could add add much value to the conference in stature or finances. I don't think that adding them makes the conference more "stable" But whatever. We'll see how the system now affects the big 12 i the playoffs. OU was never at a risk to being left out last year but TCU-Baylor sort of knocked each other out the year before.
A 16 team league of Big 12 & Conference USA? No thank you. Texas should leave and be independent and give everyone someone else to blame their problems on.
Texas and OU leave and then you're left with basically the AAC. How does that benefit UH? Cincy, UH, BYU, and Memphis? Notre Dame will never sign up, so I don't see any better options. Other than OU/UT cutting ties, then UT goes indy or Big10 or Pac10 or whatever and all bets are off.
They could just leave the conferences how they are and expand the CFP to 8 teams and guarantee a spot for the winner of each conference.
Why not? Sure the conference would lose some money, but the level of competition would stay the same or possibly improve. A lot of what is wrong with the Big 12 is because of UT's nonsense. I always hear the threat of UT leaving, but they aren't ever going to do it. UT homers try to pretend like they could make it as an independent, and they probably could in the short term, but long term, they need to be in a conference.
Stopping you right there. Do you remember what happened to the Big East when it started to lose valuable programs and they filled in the gaps? There is no Catholic 7 in the big 12 however a conference can collapse in on itself or lose the stature that made it worth joining in the 1st place if it starts to lose too many valuable programs. That heavily depends on who you bring in and losing both Texas and OU (not saying OU would definitely leave) would not make the conference seem more competitive on a national level regardless of Texas's record the last few years. This is what I'm sick of. Go negotiate your own TV deals without Texas. UT talked about leaving on 2010 along with OU. They worked out a deal and Texas has not talked about leaving since unless you are speaking about their fans. OU (Boren) talks about leaving all the time. He's the Uber of the Big 12. Why? Scheduling non-football and basketball sports would be difficult but not impossible if you hire the people to take care of that nightmare. Scheduling would be easier if they made some kind of partnership with another conference sort of what Notre Dame has with ACC football however they couldn't be a non-football member like Notre Dame is. All they have to do is negotiate directly with media networks about their 1st and 2nd tier TV rights which would be easy to do. There is already a deal with ESPN that they get the right to match any deal UT makes with a different network should it leave the big 12. The longhorn network is a $230 million dollar deal and if ESPN ever recoups the investment, Texas will get %70 of the profit going forward. It's also existing national coverage. If the choice is to give up the longhorn network or go independent then it's a very easy call IMO. However, they would ABSOLUTELY have to make sure that the OU-UT game does not get disrupted. I would rather play SMU and Tulane every year if it meant we still played OU than leaving and being done with the big 12 BS but not playing OU. As for OU, they will leave along with Texas when they are freed up if the pac 12 takes them. Texas backed out of the move last time and OU wanted to go anyway but the Pac 12 didn't want to go through with it. However, I don't think they pass on OU again considering how hard it is to get teams from other conferences now. That means Ok St goes with them. The big 12 would have lost more than half of its original members and replaced them with schools from smaller conferences. It would be Conference USA / Big East / AAC all over again.
Outside of Donny when he's not wearing his homer-red glasses, it's really funny to listen to UH fans talk about conference realignment, UT and the Big12. And yes, Brando, when I was saying "independent" I was talking about football only. That is doable, but not preferable.
That would be ideal but I don't think you can keep the Longhorn Network unless you go with a smaller conference like BYU and I don't see them doing that.
This. What's wrong with the conference is not because of UTs nonsense. It's because the conference/schools allowed the nonsense. But why they allowed it should pretty much answer any questions regarding the viability of the conference without them. Hell they let Nebraska and A&M walk right out the door with pretty much a pat on the back goodbye. Call it arrogance or whatever, but it is what it is.
