re: Facts about Texas “destroying” two conferences.

"Texas started their own TV station just for more money thus costing other teams money. If they can't control it they destroy it."

Of all the talk about it here, there was another missing important overall thing about the LHN, and the larger network it could have become if the others invited had the confidence and willingness to invest in themselves.

I'm personally not that fond of ESPN, but here are the facts as I understood them. Starting a network from the ground up took not only a lot of effort, it took belief in yourself--a belief large enough to bet big $ on it.

ESPN was going to do a fair amount of heavy lifting, but all the upgrades, changes, and upfront $ necessary to pull it off, all in the dark and ahead of the action, required a huge effort. Along with a belief that risking that much was worth doing. As mentioned above, if we weren't also trying to get much sunshine onto all of our other non-revenue sports, it is likely even Texas wouldn't have done it. But we reached down into our deep sack, and showed our balls in risking it.

I don't blame others for not having the fortitude or the guts to put so much at risk. And as noted, we tried to get them to be a part of it, as there was much to gain if it worked. Only after all the internal heavy lifting and changes were made, THEN the Aggy AD (and Mizzou, etc.) and others start saying, "well, why didn't you let us ride in the cart you built, after you set it up alone and invested and believed in yourself? If we KNEW it was all going to work, we'd have joined in earlier, instead of pissing our pants."

That's the true story. We as Longhorns believed in ourselves, put our $ where our mouth was when it mattered, and it paid off handsomely. This revisionist BS history reminds me of every mouse that squeaks when a business owner has a vision, puts sweat and risks big on that vision, and then when it pays off handsomely, they jealously wonder why they didn't get a cut, for doing absolutely NOTHING. Even after they were invited in before it started.

You can have your narrative, even widely held and falsely and unfairly recounted. But facts are stubborn things. Some of us remember...