1 hour ago, Blue Horn said:

It was a long time brewing. Everything we tried to do to make the league more profitable they fought us an OU. We tried to start a Big 12 network and were laughed out of the room. Texas and OU tried to prevent them from watering down the league with mid-majors and we got over ruled by the little thinking 12. We tried to go big game hunting to be proactive and get other teams in the Big 12, but were stumped by the little minded idiots in our league that went out and got teams that watered down our product. Then at every turn the league made rulings and decisions that were literally detrimental to OU and Texas. The Big 12 would purposefully do things to diminish Texas and OU and the relationship between us and the rest of the league was very adversarial.

The demise of the Big 12 was nothing like what happened to the SWC. The SWC was the SEC back in the day. Then SMU got the death penalty and half the league got hit with massive sanctions. That is when all the Texas kids started leaving the state. The SWC never recovered from the SMU death penalty and sanctions against others like TCU and ATM.

This is incredibly ignorant. The SWC was dead the moment the Supreme Court ruled programs could form their own associations to negotiate television contracts in 1984. The first big loss in court that has led to all the other ones, again due to violations of the Sherman Act. Everyone knew it. SMU was averaging about 20k in Texas Stadium in games that didn't feature Texas or Texas A&M even in their hey day. All three of the schools you mentioned earned every bit of those sanctions, but it wouldn't have mattered. There simply weren't enough eyeballs watching TV sets in the SWC. Being locked into one state - even two states before Arkansas left - meant the television contracts the conference negotiated were never going to be competitive with the rest of the country. The SWC tried to give Texas and A&M a bigger share, but it was never going to be enough. Didn't have anything to do with the sanctions.

Same with the Big 12. Once the TV markets from Colorado, Nebraska (not a big TV market but everyone in the state tunes in) Missouri, and A&M left the fold the Big 12 was a Dead Man walking. What alleged Big Game Hunting was there to do? Joining the Big 12 was a step down for any decent big time school. 4 of the biggest had already left for greener pastures for that reason. The Big 12 did allow Texas to sell their tier 3 rights to ESPN for $30 million per year, which kept the school competitive from a TV compensation perspective for a while. Once the recent game changing TV deals were signed by Big Ten and SEC there was nothing the Big 12 was going to be able to do to keep Texas in the fold. At that point it was just a matter of which conference Texas was going to join. The Big Ten refused to enter into secret negotiations, which was paramount for keeping the state legislature at bay long enough to make it a done deal, so Texas went with the SEC. Maybe they would have anyway, but that sealed it.

You want to be mad at the Big 12 for not doing enough to keep Texas, and the jealous members doing things to protect their turf and push Texas away, but the truth is there wasn't anything they could do to keep Texas, other than sprout 10s of millions of people out of the ground in their regions to watch college football and buy products advertised there.

At least the B12 is thinking to upgrade from Yormark.

Their hoops programs deserve a better commish.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by MarkInAustin

1 hour ago, SL Xpress said:

This is incredibly ignorant. The SWC was dead the moment the Supreme Court ruled programs could form their own associations to negotiate television contracts in 1984. The first big loss in court that has led to all the other ones, again due to violations of the Sherman Act. Everyone knew it. SMU was averaging about 20k in Texas Stadium in games that didn't feature Texas or Texas A&M even in their hey day. All three of the schools you mentioned earned every bit of those sanctions, but it wouldn't have mattered. There simply weren't enough eyeballs watching TV sets in the SWC. Being locked into one state - even two states before Arkansas left - meant the television contracts the conference negotiated were never going to be competitive with the rest of the country. The SWC tried to give Texas and A&M a bigger share, but it was never going to be enough. Didn't have anything to do with the sanctions.

Same with the Big 12. Once the TV markets from Colorado, Nebraska (not a big TV market but everyone in the state tunes in) Missouri, and A&M left the fold the Big 12 was a Dead Man walking. What alleged Big Game Hunting was there to do? Joining the Big 12 was a step down for any decent big time school. 4 of the biggest had already left for greener pastures for that reason. The Big 12 did allow Texas to sell their tier 3 rights to ESPN for $20 million per year, which kept the school competitive from a TV compensation perspective for a while. Once the recent game changing TV deals were signed by Big Ten and SEC there was nothing the Big 12 was going to be able to do to keep Texas in the fold. At that point it was just a matter of which conference Texas was going to join. The Big Ten refused to enter into secret negotiations, which was paramount for keeping the state legislature at bay long enough to make it a done deal, so Texas went with the SEC. Maybe they would have anyway, but that sealed it.

You want to be mad at the Big 12 for not doing enough to keep Texas, and the jealous members doing things to protect their turf and push Texas away, but the truth is there wasn't anything they could do to keep Texas, other than sprout 10s of millions of people out of the ground in their regions to watch college football and buy products advertised there.

*$20 million per year, not $30 million. That's a typo. It was back loaded, so not even $20 million on the front end, but that was the average. 15 years for $300 million.

Just another reason Lubbock is full of SAND AGGIES