re: Athletic Article on 8 vs 9 games and ESPN not paying

And your reply completely ignored the fact that ESPN had a written contract giving them Texas's tier 3 rights. They couldn't just walk away from that, and there was no exit clause where they could just pay some money and buy their way out.

I'm not comparing Rutgers/Maryland to Texas/OU. I'm saying that the Big Ten, historically a rather conservative conference, had last made a radical move on expansion with the addition of Rutgers and Maryland, premised upon those schools giving them entree to the the East Coast markets. It hasn't worked out, and I think Big Ten presidents would have been a tough sale if presented with this move in a landscape where things looked pretty stable. The Big XII could have easily soldiered on for another decade had Sankey rebuffed Texas and OU.