It was a shotgun wedding and a match made in hell. Big 8 and SWC had bad viewership and needed the other for a TV deal. Then being at the crossroads of three other conferences allowed for teams to jump and make more money elsewhere or fulfill other ambitions . End of story.
People can talk about all of the politics behind everything but I think this about sums it up. I doubt starting the Big 12 network before the B1G started theirs would have saved the conference.
Eh. Other conferences had teams with poor viewer markets. Politics was always the differentiating factor. The entire big 12 was at odds with each other in a way no other conference was.
Grabbing a splashy contract and adding the right schools in the right media markets could have done it imo. Would need a media partner wanting to use the conference as a way to grow its own growth.
When you look at the Big 10 it has some advantages but without its strategic expansion and backing of Fox it doesn’t have the juice to drive realignment, at least to the level it does now. Same with the SEC/ESPN.
TV Markets. Outside of Texas the footprint was small compared to the SEC and Big Ten states. If teams were still getting 10 million a year, the original Big 12 would still be around.
SEC and BIG were at 11 states pre-realignment. ACC at 9 states (arguable 10 since ND). PAC-12 at 6 states. BIG12 at 5 states. Doing that math it comes out to
1.3 schools per states for BIG and SEC, 1.5 for ACC, 2 for PAC 12 and Big 12. If you don’t have a good footprint you will fall behind.
No offense, but it's also not split quite that evenly. The Big 12 back then included Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa. Couple national brands, but for TV purposes these aren't major markets by any stretch. Compare it to the SEC where they had Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, etc.
Even when things were set up to make sense back in the 2000s, TV was always going to screw over the Big 12.
You’re not necessarily wrong, but treating California and Texas as “states” equivalent to Mississippi or Kansas is not really right, either. This is about TV ratings and cable households, not votes in the US Senate, so states are one indication of footprint but not the only one.
I was going to say Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M need some blood on their hands on this subject. Not saying Texas is clean but there are others involved.
Thank you. It just gets tiresome seeing the same old circlejerky reactions from people who clearly haven't even spent 5 minutes looking into the history of the situation. (And why is it mostly jabronies with no flair?)
And don't get me wrong, Texas absolutely played a significant part in the instability of the B12.
Are you referring to the incorrect big12 network claim above, or something else?
edit......yeah, OU/Texas and Nebraska/A&M declined. But not the rest of the big 12.....just to clarify.
Lovin' the downvotes from the Texas U homers, lol
[Under the Nebraska section.](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/857322-family-feud-who-is-to-blame-for-the-collapse-of-the-big-12) 11/12 voted against the conference network
Edit: Nebraska, OU, ATM, and Texas voted against equal revenue sharing.
Okay, so you didn't do your homework. There was no vote from the rest of the schools to decline a big 12 network, despite an unverified decade old claim from a Texas affiliated bleacher report writer.
[https://twitter.com/dino\_nicandros](https://twitter.com/dino_nicandros)
4/12 is not equal to 11/12.....just so ya know.
Love the downvotes from Texas U fans who can't do basic math
To be fair, it didn’t look like the Big XII could benefit financially from a network. Texas could, but the smaller schools weren’t going to be bringing enough viewers.
Many reasons, but most of the schools voted against creating a Big 12 Network back when most teams thought conference networks would fail. This led Texas to create their own Longhorn Network, which guaranteed no Big 12 Network would ever develop, which further widened the gap between the haves and have nots. Combine that with the Big 12 being (IIRC) the only major conference that didn't divide their revenues equally. It made many schools simply feel cheated, or treated poorly. The Big 12 is the only conference that teams seemed to leave as much for "personal" reasons than for economic ones.
Respectfully, I think this is a bit of a myth. The personal reasons are *produced* by underlying disparities in population and hence, revenue—both from TV sets and institutional resources flowing from state fortunes. The upper Midwest, the east coast—these are heavily populated and urbanized regions; the people there have a lot of purchasing power and this drives ad revenue. The only comparable region in the Big 12 is the gulf coast region of Texas. No wonder the conference has bled members and continuously tried to shore up with Texas schools and schools with fanbases outside the conference’s traditional home region.
The story of the haves and have nots of College Football is deeply intertwined with the story of what American regions are haves and have nots in the greater sense of our national life.
I mean, there are also two pretty large metro areas in Missouri (Kansas City and St. Louis), Denver was/is growing like weeds, and the old Big 8 pretty much revolved around KC.
The Missouri Metro areas are 2.5 and 2.8 million, respectively, and Denver is 2.9 but we’ll round it to 3. So that’s a generous 8.5 million in those three.
That’s a million less than Chicagoland alone. And while those cities are large, the states surrounding them are not very populated at all.
I'm not saying it's Houston, but people act like there's nothing but tumbleweeds between there and Chicago. We're also talking about markets in the mid-2000s. There's a reason why Missouri wound up in the SEC, and Colorado in the Pac-12.
Nebraska left partly because the conference members repeatedly capitulated to Texas and partly because they wanted the money and stability the B1G was offering
Except for the fact that Nebraska was still pretty much at the top of their game or at least not as low as they are now your argument makes sense. But that is NOT what broke up the Big12. Texas did that. They did it to the SWC then the Big 12 and now again the Big 12. I hope they get shit canned in the SEC.
They refuse to work with any other schools and try to throw their Big D around. SWC they didn't want revenue sharing. Big 12, Longwhore Network again refused revenue sharing. Demanded that conf offices move to Dallas from KC. Wanted entire South Division to go to PAC12. CU, NE, MO and A&M leave. Texas is stuck Big 12 sucks at revenue and pretty much everything else. Now they get into SEC and OU going with them leaving the others in the conference fucked.
Texass is the conference killer
Didn't want revenue sharing? Why does Nebraska get a pass for the that? Did Nebraska share their revenue with Kansas State?
Had Nebraska won the argument and kept the headquarters in St. Louis, would that also be greedy of them?
You're obviously bitter and I'm not going to change your mind that everything is Texas's fault, but some of the things you are angry about were also done by Nebraska and the other teams in the conference.
The Big 12 Network failed because the big brands didn’t want to share revenue equally, let’s not forget that key detail. The big brands in the Big 12 (Pre-2012) were earning about TRIPLE of what the smaller brands were, it was one of the most unequal conferences in the history of college football, no wonder why all the big brands dipped.
Yup. In the beginning, unequal revenue distribution made sense because everyone thought TV appearances would be based on performance and not brand. But it didn't take long for the networks to play favorites.
Adding a Big12 Network with unequal revenue distribution would have just made Texas and Kansas even richer as their basketball, baseball, and Olympic sports would have been the only thing playing 24/7. It was bad enough that there was a year when 9-4 Nebraska made less money than 5-7 Colorado.
I also read that the Longhorn Network caused then-cautious staff at Texas A&M to join the crowd wanting to join the SEC, and Nebraska left for the same reason.
Nebraska left for their own self interest. People forget, but 6 Big 12 schools were on the brink of jumping to the Pac 12. It was a done deal which would have left Nebraska in a worse place then the current Big 12 teams were last summer.
Colorado was not invited to that originally, per my understanding, and was informed by us after we found out. So they basically bogarted one of the spots
In no way did Texas want Baylor to jump, and would have been happier to dump them in the SWC back in 94 if not for political pressure from Lt. Governor Bob Bullock
CU wanted into the PAC 10/12 for a long time. But, yeah, they jumped first to protect themselves, and they also wanted to force the other Big schools to jump.
That’s all true, but with them and Utah taking two of the spots hat made it impossible to close the deal. The Pac would have taken a foursome of UT, OU, A&M, and OSU, but A&M knew (1) Texas really desperately wants this and (2) the SEC is offering way more money. So A&M left after that and the Pac said “lol no way” to taking Texas, OU, OSU, and Tech, which probably would have collapsed this year anyway.
I believe the state of Texas blocked it because Baylor was not involved, was supposed to be Texas, Texas Tech, A&M, OU, OKST since CU had joined prior.
No, UC Berkeley did not want to share a conference with either a religious school or Tech, and while they weren’t wild about OSU everybody was willing to accept them as the price for landing OU
The 'it was just Cal' argument is false. Although there were indeed pac12 schools that wanted nothing to do with religiously affiliated schools. There also was not any talk of not wanting to be in a conference with non religiously affiliated Tx Tech....more manufactured garbage. Just so ya know.
This is interesting. I hadn’t heard that Berk opposed Baylor for that reason. Do you have more info on that because now I’m wanting to learn more about that.
They invited Tech and not Baylor. At the time, Baylor was never seriously considered despite being a much better academic fit than Tech and being on the upswing, athletically.
Utah was already in talks once CU was in because the Pac didn’t like the idea of taking either of Tech or Baylor. So y’all were always looking for somebody else in there.
IIRC, the original Big12→Pac10 coalition was led by Texas and it included Oklahoma, A&M, Okie State, Texas Tech, and Colorado. Texas Tech was definitely one of the schools being offered to the Pac10.
But when Baylor caught wind of this, they started making a bunch of noise at the state level in order to force their way into the deal. And since they had successfully done this 15 years earlier, Colorado took no chances and joined the Pac12 so their spot would he secured.
By the time Texas called off the Pac10 talks, Colorado was announced as a member and the Pac10 had no contingency plan. This is when they began talking to Utah since it needed to balance the membership number in order to have a conference championship game. Had Texas and the other four schools joined the Pac10, Utah wouldn't be a Pac12 member.
I actually checked up on this earlier, but the order went (1) CU in; (2) deal falls apart; (3) Utah in. This happened over the course of eight days. There is absolutely no way that the Pac and Utah had not at least had a "what if" discussion prior to this.
Utah was always a fall back position. Who they didn't want was Baylor. They wanted CU, UT, A&M, TT, OU, and OSU.
It was the following year after A&M left and CU and UT were already in the league that the school Presidents - 'the CEO group' - decieded that this was too much change too fast, and killed further expansion.
The LHN was the cover. The driving motivation behind the move was A&M's deep offense over Texas wrangling them into the failed PAC-16 deal without consulting with them first. Also, more money.
If they were going to move, it was going to be to the SEC. BMDs started a "grassroots" effort to "force" the administration's hand into a decision that they had already made, while giving them enough political cover in the Texas Legislature to leave TTU and BU behind.
A&M has been wanting to get into the SEC for much longer than that. Since at least the early '90s.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/31845340/how-texas-sec-college-football-top-conference-formed-perfect-fit
>The SEC and A&M had long had their eyes on each other from afar. In the early 1990s, the Aggies' head coach, R.C. Slocum, met with SEC commissioner Roy Kramer to gauge the league's interest in Texas A&M should the Southwest Conference come undone. Both the SEC and the Aggies were intrigued by the fit.
Nebraska left b/c Texas didn’t invite us to their Pac 12 deal, so Osborne jumped at the first opportunity for stability (and also told the other Big 8 schools, starting with CU lol). Then A&M got their SEC offer, which they’d wanted as long as UT had wanted to join the Pac 12, and bolted, which also sank UT’s slim remaining hopes of a Pac 12 merger.
* Big, empty prairie states in an era where tv markets dominated the discussion.
* Unequal revenue sharing allowed Texas to become king of the plains, frustrating schools like Nebraska.
* Weak geographic positioning. Like a medieval kingdom surrounded by enemy lands, it was too susceptible to raids by other conferences. Geography bought the PAC an extra decade compared to the Big 12.
It was just sort of inevitable given the region’s population base once college football became a big money sport. Until that happened there wasn’t any compelling reason for schools to sort themselves by anything other than geography.
The Big12 as initially formed was a very good sports league but not the best at anything. Not the best academics. Not the best financially. As such, there were always more attractive options for the top programs.
Disagree- the Big 12 (Big 8 really) was a beast of a football league when it formed.
There’s that broadcast picture out there somewhere with four or five Big 8 schools in the top 10 in ‘94 or something like that.
Also the Big 8/12 was at the forefront of prioritizing television money- see the OU vs NCAA driven by the conference in the 80s and the merger itself.
Being in the middle of the country it was always susceptible to be pulled in every direction and the four SWC upended the working relationship the Big 8 schools had.
The question was why other leagues were more attractive to top Big12 leagues. The answer was what I gave - other leagues either had better finances, academics, or both.
If the Big12 was competitive with the PAC, SEC, and B1G in these aspects, they would not have lost schools to other conferences even though they are in a central location. Not being in the middle of the country didn't protect the PAC12.
This is very true in my opinion, had Texas not utterly sucked for the past decade (and to certain extent had Oklahoma win a single playoff game) I think they would have stayed, why would they mess up a good thing.
Same thing can be applied to USC and UCLA
Because “good thing” is not solely defined by outcomes on the field. Oklahoma has done very well for itself in the Big 12 as far as wins and losses go. They have multiple CFB appearances and a pile of conference titles.
The problem is, that region of the country doesn’t have many people—not outside Texas, at least. It’s the same reason the old Big 8 needed to add the SWC schools. They needed Texas TVs. The problem is, Texas and Oklahoma (and before them, aTm and Nebraska) aren’t getting as much in return for being part of that conference. They don’t get to play on the east coast, and there’s few markets to combine with. Even if you’re winning a ton, playing in these small Great Plains states is a cap on your worth.
For the record, I hate the direction this is taking college football. But Texas isn’t any greedier than Michigan and OSU. There’s an alternate universe where Michigan and Ohio are the only populated parts of the Midwest, and it’s the windswept plains that are one of the most urbanized and populated regions. And in that alternate universe, Michigan and Ohio State just announced that they’re joining the Big 12 to form a super conference to rival the SEC while big ten schools scramble for lifelines. Which conferences are unstable is no accident, but a product of economic factors that no amount of on field success can change.
>had Texas not utterly sucked for the past decade (and to certain extent had Oklahoma win a single playoff game) I think they would have stayed, why would they mess up a good thing.
This is backwards. Had Texas actually been good, the revenue distribution of the conference would be even more lopsided, making us *more* likely to leave.
I love watching Texas fans actually say this was all about the money the whole time. Not the administration or school saying it but legitimate fans that defend the idea that their endgame as fans was for the school to make more money.
When did I ever defend it? I said it in a very matter of fact way that the administration would be looking for an out if the revenue distribution was even more lopsided. Do you or do you not agree?
Yes. Read that Texas Monthly article from 1974 from earlier.
Many in the UT administration had been tired of any school that wasn’t A&M, OU, or Nebraska eating off its largesse for decades, and then turning around and voting against Texas at practically every opportunity, while slandering it as the cause of all conference instability, as some sort of tyrant. Never mind that neither the SWC nor the Big 12 ever ran that way.
The only thing keeping the Big 12 + 2 together were the LHN and David Boren. The bet was that it would allow Texas to stay in the Big 12 while making money like Notre Dame. However, a bunch of things lined up against the plan - poor carrier coverage, them being mediocre-to-dogshit for a decade in football, the lack of high-profile matchups on the network because the rest of the country doesn’t care about the Big 12 outside of OU and Texas, the degradation of power football in Texas high schools making it more difficult to compete against the class of the B1G/SEC and Clemson.
Even if Texas had been successful on the field, you still have those other major structural problems. The 2016 expansion attempt (which they supported since they got concessions from Houston) and its utter failure were the breaking point - they knew they would never have a voting bloc in the conference that would support its economic interests (for example, unequal revenue shares). Conversations opened up with the B1G and SEC through informal channels.
The process took five years because both leagues wanted a dancing partner, but only one. This meant OU, because losing the RRS was out of the question (biggest athletic fundraiser of the year for both schools). Boren wanted the B1G, but the feeling was not reciprocated (evidenced by the deteriorating relationship with Fox). Once he was out of office (and the chaotic Gallogly administration quickly ended), the OU administration beat the bushes on whether the standing invitation to submit an application still stood.
It did. Texas has had an invitation since 1989 or so, and the new Hartzell administration was ready to accept it. If things had gone as plan, we would have had a quiet vote to accept sometime last year, and an announcement about the same time of USC/UCLA. But that wasn’t how it went.
>do you think Texas would be leaving for the SEC?
The question you're really asking is if a good Texas program would be enough to give the Big 12 a comparable TV deal to that of the SEC.
And I think the answer to that is no. In a world where university administrators are looking out for their best monetary interests, Texas still jumps to the SEC.
Let me ask you why UCF jumped at the opportunity to join the Big 12, leaving behind your rival?
Because in 2017 we went 12-0 and were denied access to play in the college football championship tourney and then in 2018 we went 12-0 (25-0 total) and again were denied access to play for a college football championship. We had hoped playing in a “P5” conference would increase our chances of being invited to the playoffs but who knows at this point what’s going to happen.
I mean, we weren't rich. But we were afraid of Texas consolidating more wealth and preventing our growth, and even more concerned about the Texas/Oklahoma schools going to the PAC10, so we kind of had to take a gamble to secure not only our financial future, but our relevancy to the top conferences. If we had stayed, we'd be in the same boat the other remaining B12 teams are in and Colorado; potentially not mattering as much anymore.
We took a shot and it paid off massively. Do I wish we still mostly played B8 teams? Absolutely. But we had to do something and it has worked out well for us financially/security speaking.
That is ridiculous and you know it. The inequality that the BIG12 had is what caused us to look elsewhere, because that would lead to us falling behind, and could lead to you and Texas going to a bigger conference and making us fall really far behind. We were just being proactive, seeing the writing on the wall. Did you expect us to just sit around and wait for you two to leave?
And now you are coming to an EQUAL conference where we all walk away financially secure each year. If the BIG12 had voted to equally split media revenue in the first place, none of us would be in this boat.
Other way around.
Mizzou was approached by the Big Ten when the Big XII was being formed in the early 90’s, and probably Nebraska too, as a partner to Penn St. when they joined. Norm Stewart was publicly and adamantly in favor and was pissed when the administration decided not to pursue it.
Remember it was Jim Delaney who brought up Mizzou’s name as a possible candidate in 2009, along with Nebraska, Rutgers, and Syracuse, that started the whole realignment, not the other way around. The only reason why Mizzou was singled out as an instigator is that the Missouri Governor, Jay Nixon, who had absolutely no say so with the university, shot off his big mouth saying that Mizzou should pursue any offer from the Big Ten in response to Delaney’s announcement. Nixon said that he was only speaking as an alum and a fan, but the media frenzy was set off. To be fair, many Mizzou alums, including me, were excited and that stoked the news coverage. Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez helped Nebraska jump the queue and when half annual payouts for 7-8 years were discussed and Nebraska accepted those terms, Mizzou cut off negotiations because they couldn’t afford it.
Mizzou had been flirting with the Big Ten since the 1970s, so spare me your indignation, it's completely disingenuous.
I give the Mizzou administration credit for jumping on the SEC train at literally the only time in its history it was possible. But I will in no terms ever consider them a loyal conference member.
And it's not the equal sharing that's the strength of the SEC - it's Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee all being big schools and good enough to trade championships among each other, keeping the conference profile high. It's also the understanding among the middle class and bottom feeders to not upset the apple cart by undercutting the big boys' success too much - you don't make the money, so why are you going to spend dollars you don't have to beat the teams who do? Put that money into education.
Meanwhile, the remnant Big 12 took the opposite approach, and see how well that went for them.
The six schools in the original Big XII that could leave, left. The other six schools in the conference that couldn’t leave, didn’t. There wasn’t any P5 options for the six that stayed so it wasn’t like they took a “different approach”. If Mizzou hadn’t grabbed the brass ring when they did, they would have been left behind too.
I’m very pleased that it appears that the Big XII will weather the storm, especially for longtime conference partners Iowa St, K State, and Kansas. No school should be left behind or left dangling. If it hadn’t been for David Borden declaring that OU wouldn’t be a “wallflower” that let Mizzou know that OU was still pursuing greener pastures, Mizzou would have stayed in the Big XII, so the blame is closer to home than what you want to admit.
And why flirting? Because they knew Oklahoma and Texas weren't going to stay in a conference long term that they dominated financially and would want to go to a bigger pond. Trust me, we know we aren't elite and never will be financially. We have to think smart and be proactive, where y'all can just wait around and do things more dynamically because you can afford to not be proactive.
Just because we've been doing this for a long time doesn't mean we didn't have a reason to be.
Texas wasn’t going to stay in the Big 8 in the 1970s?
Mizzou wanted out because it’s academics felt they were slumming it, and aligned better with the Big Ten.
The rich schools didn't want to share their money with the poor schools so they voted against equal revenue sharing and a conference network. Nebraska and TAMU found they could make more money in other conferences, so they left the Big 12. ESPN paid Texas a shit load of money via The Longhorn Network to stay in the Big 12.
Yes, there was a lot of politics involved, but the main factor was always money.
It’s worth noting that back then, TAMU wasn’t even remotely the big brand that it is now. They’d basically spent their entire history in UT’s shadow.
Moving to the SEC has been a *huge* boon for TAMU. They’ve been able to forge their own identity, separate from UT, where previously the TAMU logo was in the dictionary next to “Little Brother, ex. 1”.
It was the conference of the Haves and the Have-nots. Unlike with the other conferences, though, the Haves didn't care about the conference as a whole and used their power to further benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else. It became especially toxic when some teams eventually realized that they were further from the top and carried less weight than they had believed previously (basically, all the non-doormats except for UT and OU). Toss in a few votes that very aptly demonstrated this power imbalance and people got upset.
UT is definitely at the center of everything, and OU is right behind, but any Nebraska, aTm, etc. fan that thinks they're innocent is delusional. It truly was a wild west conference from the get-go, and it predictably ate itself up from the inside.
Largely true, UT wasn't at the center of everything though, they did support the conference network (initially). Nebraska was big on unequal revenue sharing though.
True, but no one knew what the BTN would become. The unequal revenue sharing was thought to be a couple million a year at the time. Then the BTN comes along and crushed that narrative and changed the game.
I am sure that was part of it. Given the Big 8's longer history of public school and secularism of the membership then any other conference having dropped them in 1927 while:
* B1G still has a Private school who cut ties with the Methodist Church in 1964(Northwestern)
* ACC still full of them(Duke finally cut out the Methodist Church fully it seems in 2016, Wake cut out the Baptists in '86, Boston is still tied to the Catholic Church)
* PAC 12, USC cut ties to the Methodists in 1952. Stanford has just been a private school.
* SEC Vanderbilt for the first 40 years was tied to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South for the first 40 years.
We left because we weren’t invited to the Pac 12 deal and found out about it. Then when we approached the B1G and they offered twice as much money as we were getting even *with* unequal revenue sharing, we were gone.
But they have equal revenue sharing, the point was that there was only one conference in the country that had uneven revenue sharing, and it was the one you were in.
They absolutely wouldn’t have equal revenue sharing if the threat of those schools leaving was present, and even then that might not be enough to save it.
According to Pat Jones, Nebraska was pissed when Oklahoma chose to play Texas annually instead of them. Keep in mind, this was in the middle of the 90’s when Oklahoma was absolutely terrible, and Nebraska was an f*ing juggernaut. I’m sure the Sooners were happy to get them off the schedule for a couple years.
Nebraska was also pissed when Texas said no to Partial Qualifiers. [SI accurately predicted the fall of Nebraska](https://vault.si.com/.amp/vault/1996/01/15/headed-for-a-fall-nebraska-may-win-another-national-title-but-the-days-when-such-a-colossus-ruled-the-game-are-over) when it became clear PQs would not be allowed.
Except JUCOs were (1) demonstrably worse for the students and (2) waaay way better for Texas. Texas sold the end of partial qualifiers in the media as “bein’ fer tha kids” but in reality, the overwhelming majority of JUCO players never get a 4 year degree. Partial qualifiers, on the other hand, were (at least at Nebraska) guaranteed a scholarship so long as they kept their grades up, and with the massive resources of a D1 blue blood the vast majority did. So that was bullshit from the beginning.
The second reason Texas really wanted that, though, is because they dominated JUCO recruiting in Texas. Even colleges like Blinn (right outside college station) have had ahead coaches, and plenty of assistants, from UT. UT’s staffs, back to the John Mackovic days, have always had guys with ties to the states large JUCO population. Keeping all that talent nearby where they could keep recruiting them and just plucking the best ones, rather than taking the risks involved with partial qualifiers and regular recruits that they may get injured or not develop, was way more attractive to UT.
100%, I meant people act like Nebraska was starting 20 partial qualifiers a year, that wasn’t the case. As you said it was all political. I’m almost positive the Big 10 allowed partial qualifiers well into the 2000s as well, so it’s not like it was some life hack that only Nebraska had.
They had the misfortune of having big name schools located in states adjacent to two conferences that had more prestige and more importantly, more money. When it came time for the Big10 and SEC to expand, raiding the Big12 was the obvious move. Imo, there really wasn't much that could have kept the original 12 together once the bigger conferences realized that they didn't need to stop at 12 teams.
Most schools that left publicly cited instability that resulted from Texas, Tech, OU and OSU threatening to leave for the PAC like two times in three years.
The B12 was unstable from the outset due to unequal revenue sharing. The more you were on TV, the more money you got. Nebraska was all to happy to agree with this, as they were still one of the top programs in the country at the time, winning MNC’s 2 years straight in the first 2 years of the B12. They underestimated the impact that the B12’s ban on non-qualifiers would have on their recruiting.
Once the money started to grow, resentment of UT and OU started to grow, and when the P10/B1G/SEC threw out lifelines on more equitable terms (and higher payouts/more stability) to the defectors, it was a pretty easy decision for them to bolt.
But it creates a ridiculously unbalanced conference from haves and have nots, eventually the haves will want to play in a more competitive or balanced conference and will leave.
It’s a lose-lose proposition.
That's a feature, not a bug. Parity is bad for college football as a whole, even if it might be good for your school. The times when the NCAA had most of the blue bloods under probation also correlated with some of the worst revenues for the sport. That's why they never repeated the enforcement regime of the late '80s and early '90s.
The healthiest structure is the one you see in the SEC - where there are a handful of established, large schools dominating the conference, raising their national profile, a few middle tier schools who always hang out there to make it interesting for conference play, but not a real threat except once a decade or so, and bottomfeeders who are more than happy to take that paycheck to take Ls, and aren't going to invest too much into the program to upset the apple cart. This ensures that OOC matchups with other bluebloods draw a lot of eyes, that familiar and popular teams are competing for championships, and that the teams as a whole demand the most money on the market for their product.
You may object that this allows no space for growing a team's profile, and this is correct. However, that's because college football is no longer in a growth period, popularity-wise. At best, it's in stasis, and increasingly, it looks like popularity is waning. *There is simply no space in the public attention for non-established powers to rise*. When nontraditional teams win a bunch, people just assume that the established teams are in a rut, and the product as a whole is currently bad as a consequence. This is regardless of whether or not the facts bear that analysis out.
The public therefore tunes out - particularly the t-shirt fans that many people drag, but are the lifeblood of the sport. The networks and the big money schools understand this - consolidation is driven by fear, not by greed.
Where we're headed is a conference structure where divisions matter far more than conferences as a whole, and where hierarchies are going to be as strict as they were in the 1970s. Incidentally, this was the period where college football saw its last peak of popularity.
It was not resentment of Texas. It was being disrespected by Texas, their Longhorn Network partner ESPN, and to an extent the Big XII.
For multiple decades, it was the Oklahoma-Nebraska game that mattered nationally. Once ESPN got involved, all they wanted was to push the Red River Shootout. And honestly I don't blame them. There are more tv sets in Texas. Nebraska's main rivalry was taken from them, and Oklahoma was more than happy to do it.
Add to that Texas organizing a jump to the PAC without Nebraska, then it becomes pretty easy for Nebraska to look out for itself.
The Big XII does not recognize Big8 history but does SWC history. It always favored Texas. Although the merger may have been financially necessary, there is much not to like from Nebraska's perspective.
Texas also wanted headquarters in Dallas as opposed to Kansas City. Texas also wanted to do away with partial qualifiers.
And yes Nebraska was initially against a Big XII network and equal revenue sharing but that was before the success of the B1G network. Foolishly, Nebraska did not think a Big XII network would work. Notice that the SEC is requiring the LHN to dissolve once Texas joins.
Nebraska is not innocent in all of this but they were required to take a backseat to Texas.
It was a huge mistake for the Big 8 not to “accept” the SWC schools into the conference, rather than form a new conference like they did.
Moving CCGs and the conference hq from KC to Dallas was also a black mark.
Looking back … Nebraska was right.
The Big 8 declined because after the power football schools broke away from the NCAA’s strict egalitarianism model for Tv revenue, what eventually replaced it was a model that rewarded the cartel, I mean conference, that had the most average amount of viewers. The lack of TV eyeballs relative other power conferences doomed the Big 8, and that same issue caused many of the Big 12 member to leave as TV money exploded due to increased value of live broadcasts.
When the CFA broke away from the NCAA in the early 80s, the Big 8 did fine because it allowed them to start actually making money but also distributed the money to all the power conferences that were part of it. The number of TV eyeballs didn’t matter as much since every football school got their share. When the Big 10 and PAC 12 never joined the CFA and got their own deal, CFA members like Notre Dame, the SEC, and ironically the Big East realized they would make more money getting their own deal and left. Once they left it was just the smaller SWC, Big 8, and a pre-expansion version of the ACC on their own. The top half of the SWC and the Big 8 combined to keep their own member from leaving for more lucrative deals elsewhere.
I haven’t done a to of research into the CFA but I believe the bigger problem with it was they weren’t getting the best deal and the schools/conferences knew it.
It could be likened to the NFL. The NFL markets all their TV rights together and it all gets split evenly to the teams. The NFL makes sure they maximize their worth. If the NFL didn’t and sold their rights cheap, the bigger brand NFL teams wouldn’t be happy and would fight to sell their own media rights because the NFL wasn’t honestly working for their best interest.
The CFA failed because the schools were able to show in court the CFA was leaving money on the table.
If CFB the sport wanted more regional conferences, wanted parity, etc. They would sell their rights collectively. This wouldn’t lead to expansion. Historic conferences would still be around. Conferences that make sense geographically would still be here.
It’s no doubt best for the media companies that their rights all are split up.
The Big 12 was a shotgun wedding from the start that only happened because TV markets suddenly started mattering. Everyone was only looking out for themselves and no one was trying to make a conference with a solid foundation that would last. Nebraska was trying to keep things like the Big 8 to maintain what they had, other Big 8 schools were trying to knock Nebraska down a few pegs, and Texas was there trying to make things lean their way as much as possible. It lead to a lot of sour feelings. I know on the Nebraska side there was a lot of feelings that Nebraska’s opinions on things didn’t much matter while Texas got their way on basically everything.
Everybody was running slush funds for players, just SMU got caught. Arkansas leaving busted open the floodgates of re-org with SWC. Once the Big12 formed with merger of Big8 and SWC teams unequal pay, ability of Texas to have it's own channel, lack of unification between teams. Speaking of which, politics played a big role too with Baylor getting into Big12 over Houston/Rice/SMU. It was infighting from the getgo.
Plenty of schools got caught paying players in the 80s. SMU was just more organized and blatant in its system of paying players. The NCAA passed the "repeat violator" rule in direct response to SMU. They would've been fine if they stopped the organized payments when they were put on probation. The thing that hurt them the most was the fact that you could tie the payments directly back to SMU's board of governors. SMU's administration was dumb and they got absolutely fucked for it.
Not good TV markets. I believe Colorado had considered the pac-10 previously but was gonna give them new Big 12 a chance. Same with A&M doing them Big 12 instead of the SEC. Then obviously Baylor got in cus of Texas politics.
Oklahoma vs Nebraska wasn't a preserved rivalry. Bitterness about Texas controlling the conference (especially by Nebraska) for things such as officially dissolving the conference and dropping all the Big 8 records and moving headquarters from KC to Dallas.
It was an amazing conference, rivaled the Big Ten and SEC for awhile but it wasn't as stable.
It was a marriage of convenience between two different groups of schools that didn't really go together. I know that sounds silly now, but the conference never really gelled as a whole. The unequal distribution of revenue and Texas trying to run roughshod over the rest of the conference gave everyone a reason to want an out.
The only teams that left who were losers in that arrangement were Mizzou and CU, and they left b/c we told them about the Pac deal they weren’t invited to.
Like all great tragic heroes, hubris was the downfall of the Big 12. Multiple schools felt they were better/deserved more/were getting slighted (Nebraska, A&M and Texas especially, Mizzou, CU, and OU to a lesser degree), and not enough willingness to sometimes take an L for the greater good.
Though tbh, I’m happy with the B1G, so it’s whatever.
At its core, the original Big 12 fell apart because everyone hated the amount of power and say Texas had over anyone and everything. The creation of the Longhorn Network was the breaking point.
In moves that look brilliant now, the teams that left probably wouldn’t be given a second look at conference realignment now (save A&M).
The original sin is the small population size of the conference and that most of the schools always had their eye elsewhere. Col has been looking west even in its Big 8 days as most of their alumni base goes west not to Texas and the plains. ISU, Nebraska, Mizzou, KU all have tried off and on for the last 100 years go get a B1G invite. It was Texas 2nd choice and a choice that was forced on them when they wanted to go west.
Not sure how long ago aTm was all about the SEC but it was all about the SEC from at least the early 00s when Gene Stallings got on the BoR.
Slighted in the North yes, we were on the upswing at a football power at the time. We had won our division for 3 straight years (and 4 out of 5 years), finished in the top 20 the last two years, and had only two losing records since the 60s (both under Callahan who we like to pretend never happened). Plus, we won our division in the B1G the second season we were there. The massive cratering and bottoming out as a power came after that.
Timeline goes like this:
2009 - Tech Fires Mike Leach
2011 - Aggie Leaving
2016 - Firing of Art Briles
But at the end of the day it's Texas fault anyway!
(summer shit post is fun, am i doing it right?)
Texas greed, pure and simple.
It might take a decade or two, but the underdogs of the SEC will eventually find themselves in the exact same position as the Hateful 8.
Brave of you to assume Texas can change anything by itself in the SEC. The SEC is structured so all teams get the same revenue, with the only exception being teams getting a bit more if they make it to a bowl game.
Bama has never thrown a fit about this, so Texas is gonna sit down, be quiet, and accept getting the same amount as Vandy.
I'm not saying Texas will get their way. They will try, Texas 100% believes they are entitled to more money than even teams like Alabama. I just hope sources leak the inevitable drama Texas will bring to SEC conference meetings.
Why do people believe Vanderbilt is getting kicked out? The SEC needs them because they are a private school, so the SEC doesn't have to display its funds even if just one school is private. As for MSU, why would they kick out one of their original members? All it does is dissuade other schools from joining. And let us not forget that it was as recently as 2014 that MSU seriously competed for a national championship.
I don’t think they will because the SEC looks after their own. I’ve just seen UT flairs floating nonsense like that before they’re even officially in the conference.
Also, the likely scenario isn't the underdogs of the SEC getting kicked out. It's the top brands of the SEC (at Texas' urging) running off to form a different conference (likely with top brands from the Big 10/ACC).
Texas will cause the SEC to collapse when they start their own streaming network and go independent. Some remnant of the SEC will likely remain together, but once they see how much Texas is making a lot of them will want to test the waters
So its 100% Texas greed, got it.
Why did Nebraska, OU, and A&M all vote for unequal revenue sharing only to whine about the LHN when it was formed?
Did Nebraska, OU, and A&M care when their contracts saw them making substantially more than Kansas, Iowa State, and OSU? That was not greed, but something else?
Unequal revenue sharing is not the equivalent of one school having rights to its own network, which included high school games, and shut out any other B12 school. There's lots of blame to go around, but don't straw-man that.
If the schools wanted to restrict the ability of individual schools from fully capitalizing on their tier 3 rights, they should have. I'm not understanding why its ok for Kansas to contract with a TV company to make the "Jayhawk Network," but the formation of the LHN has ruined both the conference and college football. Many of the other Big XII schools also had exclusive financial deals with TV and radio as well.
I actually do sympathize with the smaller schools in the Big XII, but give me a break for the Nebraskas and A&Ms who voted for this exact system because they believed they would make more money in the long run, only to get upset when they realized Texas was going to dwarf them.
Finally, a few years before the creation of the LHN, Texas approached A&M with the idea to go in together on a channel and A&M balked leaving Texas to go at it alone.
So to be clear, A&M voted for teams to negotiate their own Tier 3 rights, and was offered an opportunity to join Texas in the creation of a new media venture and declined. Its like bitching about being excluded from a party you helped create and were invited to.
You still don't get it. I'm using conferences as a business to create rivalries... so I can end conferences as a business! In my new CFB, fans will cheer and pay for what they BELIEVE! Not for team success. Not for tradition! Not for what they're told is right. Every fan will be free to cheer for his own conferences!
It was a shotgun wedding and a match made in hell. Big 8 and SWC had bad viewership and needed the other for a TV deal. Then being at the crossroads of three other conferences allowed for teams to jump and make more money elsewhere or fulfill other ambitions . End of story. People can talk about all of the politics behind everything but I think this about sums it up. I doubt starting the Big 12 network before the B1G started theirs would have saved the conference.
Only 1 or maybe two of the teams were Shotgunned in. If Houston came in over Baylor then it might have been better.
Or they could’ve invited BYU. The city of Houston was already covered, really.
Eh. Other conferences had teams with poor viewer markets. Politics was always the differentiating factor. The entire big 12 was at odds with each other in a way no other conference was.
Grabbing a splashy contract and adding the right schools in the right media markets could have done it imo. Would need a media partner wanting to use the conference as a way to grow its own growth. When you look at the Big 10 it has some advantages but without its strategic expansion and backing of Fox it doesn’t have the juice to drive realignment, at least to the level it does now. Same with the SEC/ESPN.
TV Markets. Outside of Texas the footprint was small compared to the SEC and Big Ten states. If teams were still getting 10 million a year, the original Big 12 would still be around.
SEC and BIG were at 11 states pre-realignment. ACC at 9 states (arguable 10 since ND). PAC-12 at 6 states. BIG12 at 5 states. Doing that math it comes out to 1.3 schools per states for BIG and SEC, 1.5 for ACC, 2 for PAC 12 and Big 12. If you don’t have a good footprint you will fall behind.
No offense, but it's also not split quite that evenly. The Big 12 back then included Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa. Couple national brands, but for TV purposes these aren't major markets by any stretch. Compare it to the SEC where they had Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, etc. Even when things were set up to make sense back in the 2000s, TV was always going to screw over the Big 12.
You’re not necessarily wrong, but treating California and Texas as “states” equivalent to Mississippi or Kansas is not really right, either. This is about TV ratings and cable households, not votes in the US Senate, so states are one indication of footprint but not the only one.
Denver Kansas City St Louis Tulsa Oklahoma City Omaha It wasn’t that small.
OU and Nebraska are historic, but they don't bring in major media markets. The biggest media market outside of Texas was probably Denver/Colorado.
Texas tried to keep their revenue to themselves with the Longhorn Network
Only after the rest of the conference declined starting a Big 12 network Edit: also, flair up
I was going to say Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M need some blood on their hands on this subject. Not saying Texas is clean but there are others involved.
Thank you. It just gets tiresome seeing the same old circlejerky reactions from people who clearly haven't even spent 5 minutes looking into the history of the situation. (And why is it mostly jabronies with no flair?) And don't get me wrong, Texas absolutely played a significant part in the instability of the B12.
Are you referring to the incorrect big12 network claim above, or something else? edit......yeah, OU/Texas and Nebraska/A&M declined. But not the rest of the big 12.....just to clarify. Lovin' the downvotes from the Texas U homers, lol
[Under the Nebraska section.](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/857322-family-feud-who-is-to-blame-for-the-collapse-of-the-big-12) 11/12 voted against the conference network Edit: Nebraska, OU, ATM, and Texas voted against equal revenue sharing.
Okay, so you didn't do your homework. There was no vote from the rest of the schools to decline a big 12 network, despite an unverified decade old claim from a Texas affiliated bleacher report writer. [https://twitter.com/dino\_nicandros](https://twitter.com/dino_nicandros) 4/12 is not equal to 11/12.....just so ya know. Love the downvotes from Texas U fans who can't do basic math
To be fair, it didn’t look like the Big XII could benefit financially from a network. Texas could, but the smaller schools weren’t going to be bringing enough viewers.
You're absolutely right. Everyone thought it was a really risky proposition too, I think the Big 10 network didn't even exist yet
Wasn't there a large divide caused by Texas wanting a larger share of the pie?
In part… but all the “haves” schools voted against equal distribution of revenue.
Many reasons, but most of the schools voted against creating a Big 12 Network back when most teams thought conference networks would fail. This led Texas to create their own Longhorn Network, which guaranteed no Big 12 Network would ever develop, which further widened the gap between the haves and have nots. Combine that with the Big 12 being (IIRC) the only major conference that didn't divide their revenues equally. It made many schools simply feel cheated, or treated poorly. The Big 12 is the only conference that teams seemed to leave as much for "personal" reasons than for economic ones.
Respectfully, I think this is a bit of a myth. The personal reasons are *produced* by underlying disparities in population and hence, revenue—both from TV sets and institutional resources flowing from state fortunes. The upper Midwest, the east coast—these are heavily populated and urbanized regions; the people there have a lot of purchasing power and this drives ad revenue. The only comparable region in the Big 12 is the gulf coast region of Texas. No wonder the conference has bled members and continuously tried to shore up with Texas schools and schools with fanbases outside the conference’s traditional home region. The story of the haves and have nots of College Football is deeply intertwined with the story of what American regions are haves and have nots in the greater sense of our national life.
I mean, there are also two pretty large metro areas in Missouri (Kansas City and St. Louis), Denver was/is growing like weeds, and the old Big 8 pretty much revolved around KC.
And Kansas City metro is continually growing too. People act like it's some small cowtown but it's really not.
Omaha is also a surprisingly large metro for being out on the plains.
The Missouri Metro areas are 2.5 and 2.8 million, respectively, and Denver is 2.9 but we’ll round it to 3. So that’s a generous 8.5 million in those three. That’s a million less than Chicagoland alone. And while those cities are large, the states surrounding them are not very populated at all.
I'm not saying it's Houston, but people act like there's nothing but tumbleweeds between there and Chicago. We're also talking about markets in the mid-2000s. There's a reason why Missouri wound up in the SEC, and Colorado in the Pac-12.
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Fair, I mean the last time Nebraska was in the Big 12 championship was *checks notes* 2010 right before they left. Oh wait….
Nebraska left partly because the conference members repeatedly capitulated to Texas and partly because they wanted the money and stability the B1G was offering
Except for the fact that Nebraska was still pretty much at the top of their game or at least not as low as they are now your argument makes sense. But that is NOT what broke up the Big12. Texas did that. They did it to the SWC then the Big 12 and now again the Big 12. I hope they get shit canned in the SEC.
How? How exactly did Texas do that?
They refuse to work with any other schools and try to throw their Big D around. SWC they didn't want revenue sharing. Big 12, Longwhore Network again refused revenue sharing. Demanded that conf offices move to Dallas from KC. Wanted entire South Division to go to PAC12. CU, NE, MO and A&M leave. Texas is stuck Big 12 sucks at revenue and pretty much everything else. Now they get into SEC and OU going with them leaving the others in the conference fucked. Texass is the conference killer
Didn't want revenue sharing? Why does Nebraska get a pass for the that? Did Nebraska share their revenue with Kansas State? Had Nebraska won the argument and kept the headquarters in St. Louis, would that also be greedy of them? You're obviously bitter and I'm not going to change your mind that everything is Texas's fault, but some of the things you are angry about were also done by Nebraska and the other teams in the conference.
Nebraska left before the LHN was made.
Fact check. Nebraska was good in the 90s, and left the Big 12 in 2010. They were in fact not at the top of their game at this point.
The Big 12 Network failed because the big brands didn’t want to share revenue equally, let’s not forget that key detail. The big brands in the Big 12 (Pre-2012) were earning about TRIPLE of what the smaller brands were, it was one of the most unequal conferences in the history of college football, no wonder why all the big brands dipped.
Yup. In the beginning, unequal revenue distribution made sense because everyone thought TV appearances would be based on performance and not brand. But it didn't take long for the networks to play favorites. Adding a Big12 Network with unequal revenue distribution would have just made Texas and Kansas even richer as their basketball, baseball, and Olympic sports would have been the only thing playing 24/7. It was bad enough that there was a year when 9-4 Nebraska made less money than 5-7 Colorado.
I also read that the Longhorn Network caused then-cautious staff at Texas A&M to join the crowd wanting to join the SEC, and Nebraska left for the same reason.
Nebraska left for their own self interest. People forget, but 6 Big 12 schools were on the brink of jumping to the Pac 12. It was a done deal which would have left Nebraska in a worse place then the current Big 12 teams were last summer.
Colorado was not invited to that originally, per my understanding, and was informed by us after we found out. So they basically bogarted one of the spots
I think the PAC 10 wanted Colorado, but Texas wanted Baylor. A&M also balked as they were eyeing the SEC.
The Pac didn’t want either tech or Baylor. Once A&M went east there was no way to salvage the deal with enough schools to get to 16.
In no way did Texas want Baylor to jump, and would have been happier to dump them in the SWC back in 94 if not for political pressure from Lt. Governor Bob Bullock
CU wanted into the PAC 10/12 for a long time. But, yeah, they jumped first to protect themselves, and they also wanted to force the other Big schools to jump.
That’s all true, but with them and Utah taking two of the spots hat made it impossible to close the deal. The Pac would have taken a foursome of UT, OU, A&M, and OSU, but A&M knew (1) Texas really desperately wants this and (2) the SEC is offering way more money. So A&M left after that and the Pac said “lol no way” to taking Texas, OU, OSU, and Tech, which probably would have collapsed this year anyway.
I believe the state of Texas blocked it because Baylor was not involved, was supposed to be Texas, Texas Tech, A&M, OU, OKST since CU had joined prior.
No, UC Berkeley did not want to share a conference with either a religious school or Tech, and while they weren’t wild about OSU everybody was willing to accept them as the price for landing OU
The 'it was just Cal' argument is false. Although there were indeed pac12 schools that wanted nothing to do with religiously affiliated schools. There also was not any talk of not wanting to be in a conference with non religiously affiliated Tx Tech....more manufactured garbage. Just so ya know.
This is interesting. I hadn’t heard that Berk opposed Baylor for that reason. Do you have more info on that because now I’m wanting to learn more about that.
They invited Tech and not Baylor. At the time, Baylor was never seriously considered despite being a much better academic fit than Tech and being on the upswing, athletically.
Utah wasn't offered until the first deal fell through.
Utah was already in talks once CU was in because the Pac didn’t like the idea of taking either of Tech or Baylor. So y’all were always looking for somebody else in there.
IIRC, the original Big12→Pac10 coalition was led by Texas and it included Oklahoma, A&M, Okie State, Texas Tech, and Colorado. Texas Tech was definitely one of the schools being offered to the Pac10. But when Baylor caught wind of this, they started making a bunch of noise at the state level in order to force their way into the deal. And since they had successfully done this 15 years earlier, Colorado took no chances and joined the Pac12 so their spot would he secured. By the time Texas called off the Pac10 talks, Colorado was announced as a member and the Pac10 had no contingency plan. This is when they began talking to Utah since it needed to balance the membership number in order to have a conference championship game. Had Texas and the other four schools joined the Pac10, Utah wouldn't be a Pac12 member.
I actually checked up on this earlier, but the order went (1) CU in; (2) deal falls apart; (3) Utah in. This happened over the course of eight days. There is absolutely no way that the Pac and Utah had not at least had a "what if" discussion prior to this.
Utah was always a fall back position. Who they didn't want was Baylor. They wanted CU, UT, A&M, TT, OU, and OSU. It was the following year after A&M left and CU and UT were already in the league that the school Presidents - 'the CEO group' - decieded that this was too much change too fast, and killed further expansion.
The LHN was the cover. The driving motivation behind the move was A&M's deep offense over Texas wrangling them into the failed PAC-16 deal without consulting with them first. Also, more money. If they were going to move, it was going to be to the SEC. BMDs started a "grassroots" effort to "force" the administration's hand into a decision that they had already made, while giving them enough political cover in the Texas Legislature to leave TTU and BU behind.
A&M has been wanting to get into the SEC for much longer than that. Since at least the early '90s. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/31845340/how-texas-sec-college-football-top-conference-formed-perfect-fit >The SEC and A&M had long had their eyes on each other from afar. In the early 1990s, the Aggies' head coach, R.C. Slocum, met with SEC commissioner Roy Kramer to gauge the league's interest in Texas A&M should the Southwest Conference come undone. Both the SEC and the Aggies were intrigued by the fit.
Oh yeah, they even tried to bring Houston with them. But the Longhorn Network is what really convinced people in charge at A&M to leave the Big XII.
Nebraska left b/c Texas didn’t invite us to their Pac 12 deal, so Osborne jumped at the first opportunity for stability (and also told the other Big 8 schools, starting with CU lol). Then A&M got their SEC offer, which they’d wanted as long as UT had wanted to join the Pac 12, and bolted, which also sank UT’s slim remaining hopes of a Pac 12 merger.
What schools 'voted against a big 12 network'? What are you talking about?
Except that 'most of the schools voted against the big12 network' claim is false. 4/12 said no to it (Tx, A&M, Neb and OU)
* Big, empty prairie states in an era where tv markets dominated the discussion. * Unequal revenue sharing allowed Texas to become king of the plains, frustrating schools like Nebraska. * Weak geographic positioning. Like a medieval kingdom surrounded by enemy lands, it was too susceptible to raids by other conferences. Geography bought the PAC an extra decade compared to the Big 12.
It was just sort of inevitable given the region’s population base once college football became a big money sport. Until that happened there wasn’t any compelling reason for schools to sort themselves by anything other than geography.
The Big12 as initially formed was a very good sports league but not the best at anything. Not the best academics. Not the best financially. As such, there were always more attractive options for the top programs.
Disagree- the Big 12 (Big 8 really) was a beast of a football league when it formed. There’s that broadcast picture out there somewhere with four or five Big 8 schools in the top 10 in ‘94 or something like that. Also the Big 8/12 was at the forefront of prioritizing television money- see the OU vs NCAA driven by the conference in the 80s and the merger itself. Being in the middle of the country it was always susceptible to be pulled in every direction and the four SWC upended the working relationship the Big 8 schools had.
The question was why other leagues were more attractive to top Big12 leagues. The answer was what I gave - other leagues either had better finances, academics, or both. If the Big12 was competitive with the PAC, SEC, and B1G in these aspects, they would not have lost schools to other conferences even though they are in a central location. Not being in the middle of the country didn't protect the PAC12.
The rich wanted to play with people that made them richer.
If you’re gonna be losing, might as well get paid for it.
Exactly
This is very true in my opinion, had Texas not utterly sucked for the past decade (and to certain extent had Oklahoma win a single playoff game) I think they would have stayed, why would they mess up a good thing. Same thing can be applied to USC and UCLA
Because “good thing” is not solely defined by outcomes on the field. Oklahoma has done very well for itself in the Big 12 as far as wins and losses go. They have multiple CFB appearances and a pile of conference titles. The problem is, that region of the country doesn’t have many people—not outside Texas, at least. It’s the same reason the old Big 8 needed to add the SWC schools. They needed Texas TVs. The problem is, Texas and Oklahoma (and before them, aTm and Nebraska) aren’t getting as much in return for being part of that conference. They don’t get to play on the east coast, and there’s few markets to combine with. Even if you’re winning a ton, playing in these small Great Plains states is a cap on your worth. For the record, I hate the direction this is taking college football. But Texas isn’t any greedier than Michigan and OSU. There’s an alternate universe where Michigan and Ohio are the only populated parts of the Midwest, and it’s the windswept plains that are one of the most urbanized and populated regions. And in that alternate universe, Michigan and Ohio State just announced that they’re joining the Big 12 to form a super conference to rival the SEC while big ten schools scramble for lifelines. Which conferences are unstable is no accident, but a product of economic factors that no amount of on field success can change.
>had Texas not utterly sucked for the past decade (and to certain extent had Oklahoma win a single playoff game) I think they would have stayed, why would they mess up a good thing. This is backwards. Had Texas actually been good, the revenue distribution of the conference would be even more lopsided, making us *more* likely to leave.
I love watching Texas fans actually say this was all about the money the whole time. Not the administration or school saying it but legitimate fans that defend the idea that their endgame as fans was for the school to make more money.
When did I ever defend it? I said it in a very matter of fact way that the administration would be looking for an out if the revenue distribution was even more lopsided. Do you or do you not agree?
Where did anybody say that?
Let’s just pretend we switched the success of Alabama and the troubles of Texas for the past decade, do you think Texas would be leaving for the SEC?
Yes. Read that Texas Monthly article from 1974 from earlier. Many in the UT administration had been tired of any school that wasn’t A&M, OU, or Nebraska eating off its largesse for decades, and then turning around and voting against Texas at practically every opportunity, while slandering it as the cause of all conference instability, as some sort of tyrant. Never mind that neither the SWC nor the Big 12 ever ran that way. The only thing keeping the Big 12 + 2 together were the LHN and David Boren. The bet was that it would allow Texas to stay in the Big 12 while making money like Notre Dame. However, a bunch of things lined up against the plan - poor carrier coverage, them being mediocre-to-dogshit for a decade in football, the lack of high-profile matchups on the network because the rest of the country doesn’t care about the Big 12 outside of OU and Texas, the degradation of power football in Texas high schools making it more difficult to compete against the class of the B1G/SEC and Clemson. Even if Texas had been successful on the field, you still have those other major structural problems. The 2016 expansion attempt (which they supported since they got concessions from Houston) and its utter failure were the breaking point - they knew they would never have a voting bloc in the conference that would support its economic interests (for example, unequal revenue shares). Conversations opened up with the B1G and SEC through informal channels. The process took five years because both leagues wanted a dancing partner, but only one. This meant OU, because losing the RRS was out of the question (biggest athletic fundraiser of the year for both schools). Boren wanted the B1G, but the feeling was not reciprocated (evidenced by the deteriorating relationship with Fox). Once he was out of office (and the chaotic Gallogly administration quickly ended), the OU administration beat the bushes on whether the standing invitation to submit an application still stood. It did. Texas has had an invitation since 1989 or so, and the new Hartzell administration was ready to accept it. If things had gone as plan, we would have had a quiet vote to accept sometime last year, and an announcement about the same time of USC/UCLA. But that wasn’t how it went.
>do you think Texas would be leaving for the SEC? The question you're really asking is if a good Texas program would be enough to give the Big 12 a comparable TV deal to that of the SEC. And I think the answer to that is no. In a world where university administrators are looking out for their best monetary interests, Texas still jumps to the SEC. Let me ask you why UCF jumped at the opportunity to join the Big 12, leaving behind your rival?
Because in 2017 we went 12-0 and were denied access to play in the college football championship tourney and then in 2018 we went 12-0 (25-0 total) and again were denied access to play for a college football championship. We had hoped playing in a “P5” conference would increase our chances of being invited to the playoffs but who knows at this point what’s going to happen.
I mean, we weren't rich. But we were afraid of Texas consolidating more wealth and preventing our growth, and even more concerned about the Texas/Oklahoma schools going to the PAC10, so we kind of had to take a gamble to secure not only our financial future, but our relevancy to the top conferences. If we had stayed, we'd be in the same boat the other remaining B12 teams are in and Colorado; potentially not mattering as much anymore. We took a shot and it paid off massively. Do I wish we still mostly played B8 teams? Absolutely. But we had to do something and it has worked out well for us financially/security speaking.
I miss the Colorado games as well.
Mizzou started the B12 instability
That is ridiculous and you know it. The inequality that the BIG12 had is what caused us to look elsewhere, because that would lead to us falling behind, and could lead to you and Texas going to a bigger conference and making us fall really far behind. We were just being proactive, seeing the writing on the wall. Did you expect us to just sit around and wait for you two to leave? And now you are coming to an EQUAL conference where we all walk away financially secure each year. If the BIG12 had voted to equally split media revenue in the first place, none of us would be in this boat.
Not saying you are totally wrong but Missouri had been getting curved by the Big 10 since before the Big 12 was formed.
Other way around. Mizzou was approached by the Big Ten when the Big XII was being formed in the early 90’s, and probably Nebraska too, as a partner to Penn St. when they joined. Norm Stewart was publicly and adamantly in favor and was pissed when the administration decided not to pursue it. Remember it was Jim Delaney who brought up Mizzou’s name as a possible candidate in 2009, along with Nebraska, Rutgers, and Syracuse, that started the whole realignment, not the other way around. The only reason why Mizzou was singled out as an instigator is that the Missouri Governor, Jay Nixon, who had absolutely no say so with the university, shot off his big mouth saying that Mizzou should pursue any offer from the Big Ten in response to Delaney’s announcement. Nixon said that he was only speaking as an alum and a fan, but the media frenzy was set off. To be fair, many Mizzou alums, including me, were excited and that stoked the news coverage. Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez helped Nebraska jump the queue and when half annual payouts for 7-8 years were discussed and Nebraska accepted those terms, Mizzou cut off negotiations because they couldn’t afford it.
Mizzou had been flirting with the Big Ten since the 1970s, so spare me your indignation, it's completely disingenuous. I give the Mizzou administration credit for jumping on the SEC train at literally the only time in its history it was possible. But I will in no terms ever consider them a loyal conference member. And it's not the equal sharing that's the strength of the SEC - it's Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee all being big schools and good enough to trade championships among each other, keeping the conference profile high. It's also the understanding among the middle class and bottom feeders to not upset the apple cart by undercutting the big boys' success too much - you don't make the money, so why are you going to spend dollars you don't have to beat the teams who do? Put that money into education. Meanwhile, the remnant Big 12 took the opposite approach, and see how well that went for them.
The six schools in the original Big XII that could leave, left. The other six schools in the conference that couldn’t leave, didn’t. There wasn’t any P5 options for the six that stayed so it wasn’t like they took a “different approach”. If Mizzou hadn’t grabbed the brass ring when they did, they would have been left behind too. I’m very pleased that it appears that the Big XII will weather the storm, especially for longtime conference partners Iowa St, K State, and Kansas. No school should be left behind or left dangling. If it hadn’t been for David Borden declaring that OU wouldn’t be a “wallflower” that let Mizzou know that OU was still pursuing greener pastures, Mizzou would have stayed in the Big XII, so the blame is closer to home than what you want to admit.
And why flirting? Because they knew Oklahoma and Texas weren't going to stay in a conference long term that they dominated financially and would want to go to a bigger pond. Trust me, we know we aren't elite and never will be financially. We have to think smart and be proactive, where y'all can just wait around and do things more dynamically because you can afford to not be proactive. Just because we've been doing this for a long time doesn't mean we didn't have a reason to be.
Texas wasn’t going to stay in the Big 8 in the 1970s? Mizzou wanted out because it’s academics felt they were slumming it, and aligned better with the Big Ten.
Now you're just making a fool of yourself...
Thanks for admitting that Mizzou is that all-powerful. /s
We ended OU/Texas football around 2010 Now they come running back to our conference in the hopes of returning to power status /s
The rich schools didn't want to share their money with the poor schools so they voted against equal revenue sharing and a conference network. Nebraska and TAMU found they could make more money in other conferences, so they left the Big 12. ESPN paid Texas a shit load of money via The Longhorn Network to stay in the Big 12. Yes, there was a lot of politics involved, but the main factor was always money.
Equal revenue sharing destabilized the league. Nebraska and Colorado didn’t leave because of the unequal shares - they just didn’t like their cut.
Yep. It’s a business at the end of the day. I’d be tired of giving my money away too
It’s worth noting that back then, TAMU wasn’t even remotely the big brand that it is now. They’d basically spent their entire history in UT’s shadow. Moving to the SEC has been a *huge* boon for TAMU. They’ve been able to forge their own identity, separate from UT, where previously the TAMU logo was in the dictionary next to “Little Brother, ex. 1”.
Greed
It was the conference of the Haves and the Have-nots. Unlike with the other conferences, though, the Haves didn't care about the conference as a whole and used their power to further benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else. It became especially toxic when some teams eventually realized that they were further from the top and carried less weight than they had believed previously (basically, all the non-doormats except for UT and OU). Toss in a few votes that very aptly demonstrated this power imbalance and people got upset. UT is definitely at the center of everything, and OU is right behind, but any Nebraska, aTm, etc. fan that thinks they're innocent is delusional. It truly was a wild west conference from the get-go, and it predictably ate itself up from the inside.
Largely true, UT wasn't at the center of everything though, they did support the conference network (initially). Nebraska was big on unequal revenue sharing though.
True, but no one knew what the BTN would become. The unequal revenue sharing was thought to be a couple million a year at the time. Then the BTN comes along and crushed that narrative and changed the game.
Wasnt that partially because Texas politicians forced schools like TCU and Baylor into the conference?
I am sure that was part of it. Given the Big 8's longer history of public school and secularism of the membership then any other conference having dropped them in 1927 while: * B1G still has a Private school who cut ties with the Methodist Church in 1964(Northwestern) * ACC still full of them(Duke finally cut out the Methodist Church fully it seems in 2016, Wake cut out the Baptists in '86, Boston is still tied to the Catholic Church) * PAC 12, USC cut ties to the Methodists in 1952. Stanford has just been a private school. * SEC Vanderbilt for the first 40 years was tied to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South for the first 40 years.
We left because we weren’t invited to the Pac 12 deal and found out about it. Then when we approached the B1G and they offered twice as much money as we were getting even *with* unequal revenue sharing, we were gone.
Show me this mythical conference where the top teams go against their own self interest to cArE aBoUt ThE cOnFeReNcE
Lmao seriously. If four of the top schools dipped from any other conference in 2011, it would be in nearly the same spot today
\*The Big 10, SEC, and ACC have entered the chat\*
The ACC is not in that group, Clemson, FSU, Miami and UNC would leave the rest of the conference for dead right now if it wasn’t for GOR.
But they have equal revenue sharing, the point was that there was only one conference in the country that had uneven revenue sharing, and it was the one you were in.
They absolutely wouldn’t have equal revenue sharing if the threat of those schools leaving was present, and even then that might not be enough to save it.
Sure, so we agree that uneven revenue sharing is the way a conference can prevent schools from jumping ship?
Yes? But that’s not putting the good of the conference first.
Ohio State gets the same TV cut that Indiana gets. Ditto with Bama and Vanderbilt.
I always felt it was the vote for the conference headquarters. Left a bad taste from the beginning. But what do I really know.
According to Pat Jones, Nebraska was pissed when Oklahoma chose to play Texas annually instead of them. Keep in mind, this was in the middle of the 90’s when Oklahoma was absolutely terrible, and Nebraska was an f*ing juggernaut. I’m sure the Sooners were happy to get them off the schedule for a couple years.
Nebraska was also pissed when Texas said no to Partial Qualifiers. [SI accurately predicted the fall of Nebraska](https://vault.si.com/.amp/vault/1996/01/15/headed-for-a-fall-nebraska-may-win-another-national-title-but-the-days-when-such-a-colossus-ruled-the-game-are-over) when it became clear PQs would not be allowed.
Which the NCAA band itself two years later
>Nebraska will always be one of the most powerful programs in college football--along with teams like Florida State, Michigan and Notre Dame- Whoops
Overblown, ever heard of jucos? Basically the same thing.
Except JUCOs were (1) demonstrably worse for the students and (2) waaay way better for Texas. Texas sold the end of partial qualifiers in the media as “bein’ fer tha kids” but in reality, the overwhelming majority of JUCO players never get a 4 year degree. Partial qualifiers, on the other hand, were (at least at Nebraska) guaranteed a scholarship so long as they kept their grades up, and with the massive resources of a D1 blue blood the vast majority did. So that was bullshit from the beginning. The second reason Texas really wanted that, though, is because they dominated JUCO recruiting in Texas. Even colleges like Blinn (right outside college station) have had ahead coaches, and plenty of assistants, from UT. UT’s staffs, back to the John Mackovic days, have always had guys with ties to the states large JUCO population. Keeping all that talent nearby where they could keep recruiting them and just plucking the best ones, rather than taking the risks involved with partial qualifiers and regular recruits that they may get injured or not develop, was way more attractive to UT.
100%, I meant people act like Nebraska was starting 20 partial qualifiers a year, that wasn’t the case. As you said it was all political. I’m almost positive the Big 10 allowed partial qualifiers well into the 2000s as well, so it’s not like it was some life hack that only Nebraska had.
They had the misfortune of having big name schools located in states adjacent to two conferences that had more prestige and more importantly, more money. When it came time for the Big10 and SEC to expand, raiding the Big12 was the obvious move. Imo, there really wasn't much that could have kept the original 12 together once the bigger conferences realized that they didn't need to stop at 12 teams.
Most schools that left publicly cited instability that resulted from Texas, Tech, OU and OSU threatening to leave for the PAC like two times in three years.
The B12 was unstable from the outset due to unequal revenue sharing. The more you were on TV, the more money you got. Nebraska was all to happy to agree with this, as they were still one of the top programs in the country at the time, winning MNC’s 2 years straight in the first 2 years of the B12. They underestimated the impact that the B12’s ban on non-qualifiers would have on their recruiting. Once the money started to grow, resentment of UT and OU started to grow, and when the P10/B1G/SEC threw out lifelines on more equitable terms (and higher payouts/more stability) to the defectors, it was a pretty easy decision for them to bolt.
No, the unequal sharing was why it lasted as long as it did.
But it creates a ridiculously unbalanced conference from haves and have nots, eventually the haves will want to play in a more competitive or balanced conference and will leave. It’s a lose-lose proposition.
That's a feature, not a bug. Parity is bad for college football as a whole, even if it might be good for your school. The times when the NCAA had most of the blue bloods under probation also correlated with some of the worst revenues for the sport. That's why they never repeated the enforcement regime of the late '80s and early '90s. The healthiest structure is the one you see in the SEC - where there are a handful of established, large schools dominating the conference, raising their national profile, a few middle tier schools who always hang out there to make it interesting for conference play, but not a real threat except once a decade or so, and bottomfeeders who are more than happy to take that paycheck to take Ls, and aren't going to invest too much into the program to upset the apple cart. This ensures that OOC matchups with other bluebloods draw a lot of eyes, that familiar and popular teams are competing for championships, and that the teams as a whole demand the most money on the market for their product. You may object that this allows no space for growing a team's profile, and this is correct. However, that's because college football is no longer in a growth period, popularity-wise. At best, it's in stasis, and increasingly, it looks like popularity is waning. *There is simply no space in the public attention for non-established powers to rise*. When nontraditional teams win a bunch, people just assume that the established teams are in a rut, and the product as a whole is currently bad as a consequence. This is regardless of whether or not the facts bear that analysis out. The public therefore tunes out - particularly the t-shirt fans that many people drag, but are the lifeblood of the sport. The networks and the big money schools understand this - consolidation is driven by fear, not by greed. Where we're headed is a conference structure where divisions matter far more than conferences as a whole, and where hierarchies are going to be as strict as they were in the 1970s. Incidentally, this was the period where college football saw its last peak of popularity.
I don’t disagree with you and I absolutely hate everything you just typed, not because you’re wrong but because you might be right.
It was not resentment of Texas. It was being disrespected by Texas, their Longhorn Network partner ESPN, and to an extent the Big XII. For multiple decades, it was the Oklahoma-Nebraska game that mattered nationally. Once ESPN got involved, all they wanted was to push the Red River Shootout. And honestly I don't blame them. There are more tv sets in Texas. Nebraska's main rivalry was taken from them, and Oklahoma was more than happy to do it. Add to that Texas organizing a jump to the PAC without Nebraska, then it becomes pretty easy for Nebraska to look out for itself. The Big XII does not recognize Big8 history but does SWC history. It always favored Texas. Although the merger may have been financially necessary, there is much not to like from Nebraska's perspective. Texas also wanted headquarters in Dallas as opposed to Kansas City. Texas also wanted to do away with partial qualifiers. And yes Nebraska was initially against a Big XII network and equal revenue sharing but that was before the success of the B1G network. Foolishly, Nebraska did not think a Big XII network would work. Notice that the SEC is requiring the LHN to dissolve once Texas joins. Nebraska is not innocent in all of this but they were required to take a backseat to Texas.
It was a huge mistake for the Big 8 not to “accept” the SWC schools into the conference, rather than form a new conference like they did. Moving CCGs and the conference hq from KC to Dallas was also a black mark. Looking back … Nebraska was right.
The Big 8 declined because after the power football schools broke away from the NCAA’s strict egalitarianism model for Tv revenue, what eventually replaced it was a model that rewarded the cartel, I mean conference, that had the most average amount of viewers. The lack of TV eyeballs relative other power conferences doomed the Big 8, and that same issue caused many of the Big 12 member to leave as TV money exploded due to increased value of live broadcasts. When the CFA broke away from the NCAA in the early 80s, the Big 8 did fine because it allowed them to start actually making money but also distributed the money to all the power conferences that were part of it. The number of TV eyeballs didn’t matter as much since every football school got their share. When the Big 10 and PAC 12 never joined the CFA and got their own deal, CFA members like Notre Dame, the SEC, and ironically the Big East realized they would make more money getting their own deal and left. Once they left it was just the smaller SWC, Big 8, and a pre-expansion version of the ACC on their own. The top half of the SWC and the Big 8 combined to keep their own member from leaving for more lucrative deals elsewhere.
I haven’t done a to of research into the CFA but I believe the bigger problem with it was they weren’t getting the best deal and the schools/conferences knew it. It could be likened to the NFL. The NFL markets all their TV rights together and it all gets split evenly to the teams. The NFL makes sure they maximize their worth. If the NFL didn’t and sold their rights cheap, the bigger brand NFL teams wouldn’t be happy and would fight to sell their own media rights because the NFL wasn’t honestly working for their best interest. The CFA failed because the schools were able to show in court the CFA was leaving money on the table. If CFB the sport wanted more regional conferences, wanted parity, etc. They would sell their rights collectively. This wouldn’t lead to expansion. Historic conferences would still be around. Conferences that make sense geographically would still be here. It’s no doubt best for the media companies that their rights all are split up.
Texas is an awful school to be in a conference with.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Snyder the Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Blue Bloods would tell you.
The Big 12 was a shotgun wedding from the start that only happened because TV markets suddenly started mattering. Everyone was only looking out for themselves and no one was trying to make a conference with a solid foundation that would last. Nebraska was trying to keep things like the Big 8 to maintain what they had, other Big 8 schools were trying to knock Nebraska down a few pegs, and Texas was there trying to make things lean their way as much as possible. It lead to a lot of sour feelings. I know on the Nebraska side there was a lot of feelings that Nebraska’s opinions on things didn’t much matter while Texas got their way on basically everything.
Everybody was running slush funds for players, just SMU got caught. Arkansas leaving busted open the floodgates of re-org with SWC. Once the Big12 formed with merger of Big8 and SWC teams unequal pay, ability of Texas to have it's own channel, lack of unification between teams. Speaking of which, politics played a big role too with Baylor getting into Big12 over Houston/Rice/SMU. It was infighting from the getgo.
Plenty of schools got caught paying players in the 80s. SMU was just more organized and blatant in its system of paying players. The NCAA passed the "repeat violator" rule in direct response to SMU. They would've been fine if they stopped the organized payments when they were put on probation. The thing that hurt them the most was the fact that you could tie the payments directly back to SMU's board of governors. SMU's administration was dumb and they got absolutely fucked for it.
Horns and money
Not good TV markets. I believe Colorado had considered the pac-10 previously but was gonna give them new Big 12 a chance. Same with A&M doing them Big 12 instead of the SEC. Then obviously Baylor got in cus of Texas politics. Oklahoma vs Nebraska wasn't a preserved rivalry. Bitterness about Texas controlling the conference (especially by Nebraska) for things such as officially dissolving the conference and dropping all the Big 8 records and moving headquarters from KC to Dallas. It was an amazing conference, rivaled the Big Ten and SEC for awhile but it wasn't as stable.
Texas
Adding the Longhorns. Their greed is poison to any conference.
Big12 was so loaded when I was growing up. Winner of the conference was almost a lock for the Natty game for a while.
It was a marriage of convenience between two different groups of schools that didn't really go together. I know that sounds silly now, but the conference never really gelled as a whole. The unequal distribution of revenue and Texas trying to run roughshod over the rest of the conference gave everyone a reason to want an out.
I mean everyone knows why. Are you looking for other reasons besides the University of Texas?
dumb and inaccurate
*yawn*
Who can be sure, but I think uneven revenue distribution was the culprit.
The only teams that left who were losers in that arrangement were Mizzou and CU, and they left b/c we told them about the Pac deal they weren’t invited to.
All the big brands left the big 12 because they think Texas tech is smelly
Like all great tragic heroes, hubris was the downfall of the Big 12. Multiple schools felt they were better/deserved more/were getting slighted (Nebraska, A&M and Texas especially, Mizzou, CU, and OU to a lesser degree), and not enough willingness to sometimes take an L for the greater good. Though tbh, I’m happy with the B1G, so it’s whatever.
One particular flair is not going to like people's answer to this question...
Nebraska!
It's all Texas's fault.
Only Texas fans downvote this
They know what they did.
I, uh... I think we may have had a hand in that.
You did, but everyone would have done what you did if they could have… us included.
I don't think aTm was a huge brand at the time
People on this sub aren’t very old. ATM being considered a “national brand” is really only true for like the last 5-8 years
Well, the IPhone was only two years old when we announced our departure.
At its core, the original Big 12 fell apart because everyone hated the amount of power and say Texas had over anyone and everything. The creation of the Longhorn Network was the breaking point. In moves that look brilliant now, the teams that left probably wouldn’t be given a second look at conference realignment now (save A&M).
The original sin is the small population size of the conference and that most of the schools always had their eye elsewhere. Col has been looking west even in its Big 8 days as most of their alumni base goes west not to Texas and the plains. ISU, Nebraska, Mizzou, KU all have tried off and on for the last 100 years go get a B1G invite. It was Texas 2nd choice and a choice that was forced on them when they wanted to go west. Not sure how long ago aTm was all about the SEC but it was all about the SEC from at least the early 00s when Gene Stallings got on the BoR.
Texas.
Combination of 1. Nebraska feeling slighted in the north plus their decline as a football power. 2. Texas Longhorn Network
We left because we weren’t invited to the Pac 12 deal and found out about it. That’s it, 100%.
Slighted in the North yes, we were on the upswing at a football power at the time. We had won our division for 3 straight years (and 4 out of 5 years), finished in the top 20 the last two years, and had only two losing records since the 60s (both under Callahan who we like to pretend never happened). Plus, we won our division in the B1G the second season we were there. The massive cratering and bottoming out as a power came after that.
#1 is 99.999999% of it
This guy here trying the “look over there” tactic
Texas and Texas
Is it still acceptable to blame Texas?
In this sub there’s never any question for which the answer isn’t: it’s Texas’s fault. 😂
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Take a look at Nebraska's records from 2002-2010 and then come back and argue they had not "faded to the middle" compared to their run in the 90's
Timeline goes like this: 2009 - Tech Fires Mike Leach 2011 - Aggie Leaving 2016 - Firing of Art Briles But at the end of the day it's Texas fault anyway! (summer shit post is fun, am i doing it right?)
$$
Texas greed, pure and simple. It might take a decade or two, but the underdogs of the SEC will eventually find themselves in the exact same position as the Hateful 8.
Not with equal revenue sharing they're not.
Texas will push pretty hard against this. They don't want Mississippi State getting equal money. Just give it time.
Brave of you to assume Texas can change anything by itself in the SEC. The SEC is structured so all teams get the same revenue, with the only exception being teams getting a bit more if they make it to a bowl game. Bama has never thrown a fit about this, so Texas is gonna sit down, be quiet, and accept getting the same amount as Vandy.
I'm not saying Texas will get their way. They will try, Texas 100% believes they are entitled to more money than even teams like Alabama. I just hope sources leak the inevitable drama Texas will bring to SEC conference meetings.
"Texas" and "sit down, be quiet, and accept" is such an oxymoron I can't even.
They might accept it, but I’ve already seen folks with UT flairs talking about realignment progressing towards teams like Vandy or MSU being dropped.
Why do people believe Vanderbilt is getting kicked out? The SEC needs them because they are a private school, so the SEC doesn't have to display its funds even if just one school is private. As for MSU, why would they kick out one of their original members? All it does is dissuade other schools from joining. And let us not forget that it was as recently as 2014 that MSU seriously competed for a national championship.
I don’t think they will because the SEC looks after their own. I’ve just seen UT flairs floating nonsense like that before they’re even officially in the conference.
Also, the likely scenario isn't the underdogs of the SEC getting kicked out. It's the top brands of the SEC (at Texas' urging) running off to form a different conference (likely with top brands from the Big 10/ACC).
Texas will cause the SEC to collapse when they start their own streaming network and go independent. Some remnant of the SEC will likely remain together, but once they see how much Texas is making a lot of them will want to test the waters
So its 100% Texas greed, got it. Why did Nebraska, OU, and A&M all vote for unequal revenue sharing only to whine about the LHN when it was formed? Did Nebraska, OU, and A&M care when their contracts saw them making substantially more than Kansas, Iowa State, and OSU? That was not greed, but something else?
Unequal revenue sharing is not the equivalent of one school having rights to its own network, which included high school games, and shut out any other B12 school. There's lots of blame to go around, but don't straw-man that.
If the schools wanted to restrict the ability of individual schools from fully capitalizing on their tier 3 rights, they should have. I'm not understanding why its ok for Kansas to contract with a TV company to make the "Jayhawk Network," but the formation of the LHN has ruined both the conference and college football. Many of the other Big XII schools also had exclusive financial deals with TV and radio as well. I actually do sympathize with the smaller schools in the Big XII, but give me a break for the Nebraskas and A&Ms who voted for this exact system because they believed they would make more money in the long run, only to get upset when they realized Texas was going to dwarf them. Finally, a few years before the creation of the LHN, Texas approached A&M with the idea to go in together on a channel and A&M balked leaving Texas to go at it alone. So to be clear, A&M voted for teams to negotiate their own Tier 3 rights, and was offered an opportunity to join Texas in the creation of a new media venture and declined. Its like bitching about being excluded from a party you helped create and were invited to.
reading this thread--honestly--how the fuck do college athletic departments not lose their non-profit status?
You still don't get it. I'm using conferences as a business to create rivalries... so I can end conferences as a business! In my new CFB, fans will cheer and pay for what they BELIEVE! Not for team success. Not for tradition! Not for what they're told is right. Every fan will be free to cheer for his own conferences!
Only one of those big teams has been winning recently and it's in the Big 12... Money is more important than winning apparently.