Chances are zero honestly. Nebraska was already making north of $50M from tv in the BIG. For comparison, UT/OU were making around $40M. Another problem is BIG's tv deal expires before the Big 12's so the disparity is likely to make a SIGNIFICANT jump once the new deals are negotiated.
I hate to just keep linking to Reddit posts but here's another really good one. Spoiler TL;DR - Apparently the Big 12 requires a 75% vote to dissolve the conference. Even in the most aggressive expansion scenarios, you probably aren't going to find a P5 home for 6 of the remaining 8 teams, so that means that the 2025 end-date for the agreement is very sticky. Secondly, Oklahoma State's President fired the first shot at UT/OU from a legal standpoint, by accusing them of violating the conference's rules outright. This is important for the settlement, obviously. Lastly, because there's an actual designation in the conference bylaws of a "withdrawing member", if the conference officially designates UT/OU as that, then it starts a timer that will effectively eject them from the conference in June of 2023, which will trigger all kinds of wacky lawyering I'm sure.
Saw this posted on a Big 12 fan forum. Seems like the logical conclusion of all this. However, half the comments were like "swap Baylor for Houston" lol.
Spoiler https://theathletic.com/2731657/202...nd-the-rest-and-why-remaining-8-should-worry/ TCU has produced seven top-10 teams under coach Gary Patterson. Oklahoma State has finished in the Top 25 nine times under Mike Gundy. Iowa State is coming off a New Year’s Six bowl win and a top-10 finish. Baylor just won the NCAA Tournament in men’s basketball. But conference realignment is only marginally tied to on-field performance. Television value — nearly all of which comes from football — is the overwhelming factor when leagues consider adding new schools. If Texas and Oklahoma do in fact defect to the SEC, the Big 12’s “Left-Behind 8” may be in for a humbling reception as they begin exploring their options. The unfortunate reality is there’s very little difference between the TV interest in Kansas State and West Virginia and the interest for UCF or Houston. The Big 12 reported $253 million in annual television revenue on its 2019-20 tax return, most of that from a pair of 13-year contracts it signed with ESPN and Fox in 2012. Two sports TV consultants estimated to The Athletic that about 50 percent of those deals’ value was derived solely because of Texas and Oklahoma. A look at recent Big 12 football TV ratings provides an eye-opening explanation. The Athletic pulled data from Sports Media Watch for every Big 12 regular-season home game from the 2018 and ’19 seasons that aired on ABC, Fox, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU or FS1. (Viewership data for Big 12 games on Longhorn Network, ESPN+ and regional networks aren’t publicly available.) As co-rights holders, ESPN and Fox hold a draft for each week of the season to determine which games land on which network. They almost always place their top games on over-the-air networks Fox and ABC. Perhaps the most telling sign of how disproportionately important OU and UT were to those companies is that 33 of the 38 Big 12 games chosen for ABC or Fox — 87 percent — involved one or both of those schools. In 2019, all 11 Oklahoma games covered by the Big 12’s Tier 1 contract were shown over-the-air. Ten of 11 were the year before. It’s no coincidence, then, that 27 of the conference’s 30 most-viewed regular-season games over those two seasons involved the Sooners and/or the Longhorns, led by the 2019 LSU-Texas game on ABC (8.6 million) and the 2019 Red River Showdown (7.3 million). No. 3 on the list did involve one of the Left-Behind 8, but it also included another national power — the 2018 Ohio State-TCU game in Arlington, Texas, on ABC (7.2 million). You have to scroll through 11 games before finding a game between two of the Left-Behind 8 — West Virginia at Oklahoma State in 2018 on ABC (3.9 million). Most-watched Big 12 games, 2018-2019 Game Viewers Network 2019 LSU at Texas 8.6 million ABC 2019 Oklahoma vs. Texas 7.3 million Fox 2018 Ohio State vs. TCU 7.2 million ABC 2019 Oklahoma at Baylor 6.8 million ABC 2019 Oklahoma at Oklahoma State 5.8 million Fox 2018 Oklahoma at West Virginia 5.6 million ESPN 2018 Oklahoma vs. Texas 5.6 million Fox 2019 Houston at Oklahoma 5.4 million ABC 2018 West Virginia at Texas 4.4 million Fox 2019 Oklahoma at Kansas State 4.2 million ABC 2018 Oklahoma State at Oklahoma 3.9 million ABC 2018 West Virginia at Oklahoma State 3.9 million ABC The discrepancy becomes particularly glaring when average audiences are compared. The 22 Oklahoma games included in the two-year sample averaged 3.76 million viewers. The 18 Texas games averaged 3.2 million. The other 59 Big 12 games averaged a modest 886,000 viewers, less than 25 percent of Oklahoma’s average. Average TV audience, 2018-2019 Team Avg. TV audience Games Oklahoma 3.76 million 22 Texas 3.2 million 18 Others 886,000 59 *(Regular season Big 12 home games on Fox, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU or FS1) Tellingly, the two largest audiences for an ESPN game involving the other eight Big 12 teams were for nonconference games featuring SEC opponents, both in 2018: Ole Miss vs. Texas Tech in (1.9 million) and Mississippi State at Kansas State (1.8 million). The largest ESPN audience for a game between two Big 12 teams not named Oklahoma or Texas was 1.6 million for Iowa State at West Virginia in 2019. In fairness, that 886,000 number is due at least in part to 33 of those 59 games airing on FS1, a struggling network that has largely failed to gain traction despite widespread availability. But it’s not as if the Big 12 is the only conference that FS1 shows. The Big 12’s FS1 games averaged about 40 percent fewer viewers than the 22 Big Ten games that network showed during the same time. The Athletic also compared the Big 12’s data with that of the American Athletic Conference. For apples-to-apples purposes, only games on the ESPN networks were included, as the AAC does not have a contract with Fox. The 22 non-OU/Texas Big 12 home games on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2 over those two seasons averaged 1.37 million viewers. The 49 AAC home games on those same networks averaged 1.01 million viewers. But take away that one mammoth Ohio State-TCU outlier from the Big 12, and its number drops to 1.10 million. That’s just 90,000 more viewers, on average, than the AAC draws. So what does all this mean for the Left-Behind 8? Per its Form 990, the Big 12 distributed an average of $38.5 million to its members in fiscal year 2020. With TV contracts accounting for 62 percent of the conference’s $409 million in total revenue, it can reasonably be estimated that TV accounted for about $24 million of those schools’ distribution checks. If the aforementioned TV consultants are correct in their estimate that Oklahoma and Texas generated 50 percent of that value, then the Left-Behind 8 would expect to see that number drop to $12 million per school. Even if the other revenue streams remained the same — unlikely, as the league would also produce fewer bowl and NCAA Tournament teams — their overall share would drop to $26.5 million That’s about half what the Big Ten currently distributes to its members and about 40 percent of what the SEC is projected to reach if Oklahoma and Texas come aboard. And that $12 million TV figure might prove too optimistic if/when the Big 12 negotiates its next contract. On one hand, sports rights in general have skyrocketed in the nine years since the conference last went to the market. On the other, such a depleted conference does not figure to garner a bidding war between networks, which could dampen the price. A more useful recent analog, given the viewership numbers cited earlier, might be the AAC’s new ESPN deal that began in 2020. That contract nets its schools about $7 million a year on average. Unfortunately, that $7 million-to-$12 million range does not bode well for the Left-Behind 8’s chances of landing an invitation to one of the other Power 5 conferences. The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 are unlikely to invite a school that would drag down its current members’ slice of the conference pie. All three currently make far more than that from media rights. The more realistic play is for the AAC and Left-Behind 8 to join forces in some capacity. The only question is which league will raid the other. Sources told The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach that the “Power 6” conference plans to become an aggressor. Meanwhile, a Big 12 AD lamented to The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman last week that “bringing in a Cincinnati and UCF doesn’t bring any eyeballs.” Technically, that AD’s not wrong. There’s no evidence to suggest those schools bring in more eyeballs than his. But he may need to come to terms with the reality that his school may soon be held in similar regard.
This part is just... *chef's kiss* I'm trying to keep my schadenfreude in check here, but after so many years of being told by effectively peer institutions we were 'beneath' them, their sudden finding out the hard way that they are indeed not above us is so damned satisfying.
I don't see the Pac 12 wanting to split revenue with multiple teams not carrying their weight financially. I could see maybe wanting TCU and/or UH to bring those respective city and state markets into the fold, but what in the hell does Tech, Baylor, Ok St. or K St add to their conference from a money standpoint? Being in the same conference as Texas and OU is all they've ever really had.
That does seem about right. I could see UH getting in to one of those. Man does TCU get screwed, though. They just disappear. I guess they join the AAC? The are the team in the DFW media market. Crazy to think that all of this realignment for tv's sake could leave out the #5 (DFW) and #8 (Houston) media markets.
Tell Tilman to sell this absolute joke of a Rockets franchise that he's run into the ground and use the money to get UH to the promise land. If I'm KSU, OKST or Tech I'm ultimately upset about dissolving the Big 12 and moving to the Pac 12. But if I'm a Baylor fan - I'm pumped. Way more entertaining scenario across all sports.
I was also thinking... are Clemson and Florida State even that sexy? I mean... they are... super sexy. SEC would surely love to have them. But still. Jimbo make Florida State out to be a 2nd rate tier 1 program. And Clemson has a great coach, good fans, never ending talent and a ton of momentum. But they are absolutely a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately program. Clemson is a juggernaut and Texas is still 5x more more important. Those 2 schools are clear far and away seconds to OU/UT IMO.
I can't see how the PAC picks Baylor given the religious affiliation. TCU is more secular than Baylor, but about half of Tech's alumni are located in DFW, so I think that the PAC would view that area as covered. Kinda bums me out, because I like TCU. I think Tech and Houston make a good partnership, though.
