For OU fans, hating Texas is easy. In fact, some Sooner fans would argue that Texas makes it easy for others to hate them. Some will cite their players for cheap plays, some recall Mack Brown’s lobbying for BCS positioning on ESPN. Others blame Texas for the condition that the Big 12 is currently in. While it’s true, the conference stayed together, largely in part by Texas, should they be blamed for the state of Big 12 football? Should anyone blame them for trying to prolong the status quo? Who would do any differently, if they were in the position to do so?
No one will argue that the Big 12’s previous, and current, television contracts benefit the Longhorns more than any other conference team. Texas has been granted the ability to create its own network, generating somewhere between $20-25 million in annual revenue. Any school in the Big 12 is welcome to do the same, and OU plans to create their own network. However, given the size of Texas’ market, it is unlikely that any other team in the Big 12 will create the kind of success that Texas has the potential to achieve.
So who is to blame for Texas’ separation from the pack in the game of “haves” and “have-nots”? Some would say that Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe allowed the Big 12 to be undermined by a single school that owned the biggest market, while others blamed him for his inability to ink a TV deal that allowed the conference to play on Fox’s national network and more evenly allocate the revenue, like the Pac 12 deal was able to do. Whether he shares the blame for the perception of a one-sided conference deal, Beebe’s reputation is certainly synonymous with Texas’ perceived ability to act as an independent, while benefiting from being aligned with a conference.
So if the Big 12 is being run with such uncertainty, as it is perceived to be, what reason do the other conference members have to stay aligned together? For smaller market schools, such as Kansas, Iowa State, K-State, Missouri, Baylor and Texas Tech its simple: They have no better option. The other remaining schools (OU, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M) cannot say the same. All four schools were rumored to have been offered alignment with the Pac 12, the SEC, or both when this story broke last June. This would have allowed them an evenly distributed revenue share, similar scheduling to their current format, and a better television deal than the Big 12 had previously (or since) offered. Instead, all four teams chose to stay put, in hopes that Dan Beebe could save the conference with a new TV deal.
It’s been rumored that the only schools with any real bargaining power in the ordeal were OU and Texas A&M. OU, it seems, had an interest to create their own network as well. When the new TV deal was announced, we saw that the conference had generated more revenue for its schools. However, Texas still claims the largest slice of the pie, in addition to its revenue it can generate from its own network.
It has been stated by OU Athletic Director Joe Castiglione that a “Sooner Network” is in the works, although little details have been given to its nature or release date. It is uncertain whether Texas A&M plans to do the same, but neither would likely be able to generate the revenue that The Longhorn Network will. In January, ESPN inked an exclusive TV deal with Texas worth $300 million.
The future of the Big 12 is still unclear. The decisions that have been made do not seem to make a lot of sense for most parties involved. Regardless of whom you decide to blame for the cloudy state of the conference, one thing is clear: Texas only did what was in their best interest. Can the same be said for the Big 12, or its remaining schools’ athletic directors?
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