re: Big 8 + SWC superconference

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Tried that once and texas fricked it all up

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The “Texas Destroyed the Big 12” Story Leaves Out a Whole Lot of History

Every time conference realignment comes up, somebody repeats the same story: Texas was greedy, Texas demanded special treatment, Texas created the Longhorn Network, and Texas destroyed the original Big 12.

Texas absolutely deserves its share of criticism.

But if we're going to talk about what actually happened, let's talk about ALL of it.

1. Texas did not create the Big 12's unequal revenue-sharing system by itself.

The original Big 12 did not divide television revenue equally. A substantial portion was distributed according to television appearances, meaning the programs appearing on TV most often received more money.

That obviously benefited the major television draws.

And those beneficiaries weren't just Texas.

They included **Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas A&M.

Former Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe specifically identified Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas A&M as the schools that opposed moving to completely equal revenue sharing. Those four schools had enough votes to block a change.

So when people portray unequal revenue sharing as something Texas imposed on innocent conference members, that's simply not an accurate history.

2. The third-tier-rights issue is even more ironic.

People constantly say Texas destroyed the conference because it insisted on keeping its third-tier television rights and eventually created the Longhorn Network.

There's a rather important part of that story that gets forgotten:

Big 12 schools already retained their own third-tier rights.

That wasn't some special exemption invented for Texas when ESPN showed up with a check.

Every Big 12 school had those rights.

Texas president Bill Powers explicitly explained in 2010 that every Big 12 institution retained those television rights and could exploit its own Tier 3 inventory.

Even better, years earlier Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg pushed the conference toward a league television network which would have required schools to pool those rights.

According to accounts of the vote, the proposal failed 11-1.

Guess who reportedly cast the ONE vote supporting the conference-network concept?

Texas.

In other words, schools including Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Nebraska were perfectly happy retaining their own third-tier rights rather than pooling them into a conference network.

Then ESPN decided Texas's rights were worth a fortune.

Suddenly the existence of individually owned third-tier rights became a conference-destroying injustice.

That's a pretty significant piece of context.

3. The Longhorn Network was Texas monetizing rights the conference already allowed Texas to own.

ESPN eventually offered Texas a massive deal for those rights.

Texas accepted it.

You can absolutely argue that the Longhorn Network became terrible for conference unity. It did.

You can argue Texas should have recognized that and compromised more. That's fair too.

But Texas did not secretly seize television rights belonging to the Big 12.

It sold television rights that, under the Big 12's existing structure, already belonged to Texas, just as the other schools' third-tier rights belonged to them.

Oklahoma subsequently monetized its own rights through the Sooner Sports Network.

The difference wasn't that Texas possessed a right denied to Oklahoma or Texas A&M.

The difference was that Texas's rights were worth dramatically more money according to ESPN.

4. Texas A&M's position is particularly difficult to reconcile.

A&M benefited from the unequal-revenue system and was among the major programs resistant to completely equal revenue sharing.

A&M also retained its own third-tier rights under the same system Texas used.

Then, after Texas landed the enormous ESPN deal, the Longhorn Network became one of A&M's major complaints about the conference.

Former A&M president R. Bowen Loftin later said the LHN announcement dramatically changed Aggie sentiment toward leaving for the SEC.

A&M had every right to decide the SEC was better for A&M.

What doesn't make sense is pretending A&M had spent the previous 15 years fighting against the very conference structure that allowed the LHN to exist.

It hadn't.

5. Nebraska wasn't simply an innocent victim of unequal revenue sharing either.**

Nebraska was another major beneficiary of the original system and another power program that resisted equal sharing.

Nebraska also was not demanding that Texas surrender its third-tier rights for a Big 12 network. Texas president Bill Powers specifically said in 2010 that Nebraska had been aligned with Texas on that issue.

Then Nebraska accepted a Big Ten invitation in 2010.

Colorado went to the Pac-12.

Texas A&M chose the SEC in 2011.

Missouri chose the SEC shortly afterward.

Those universities made decisions they believed were best for themselves.

Which is exactly what Texas did.

6. And when the Big 12 finally moved to equal revenue sharing? Texas agreed.

In June 2011, the Big 12 schools unanimously approved a more equitable system in which 76% of football and basketball television revenue would be shared equally.

Then, in October 2011, the conference went further and approved equal distribution of Tier I and Tier II television revenue.

Again, the vote was unanimous.

Third-tier rights remained with the individual schools.

That last sentence matters.

Even after the Longhorn Network controversy exploded, the Big 12's solution was NOT to confiscate Texas's third-tier rights.

The schools agreed to equalize the conference's Tier I and Tier II revenue while continuing to let every institution control its own Tier III rights.

7. None of this means Texas was blameless.

Texas was powerful, looked after its own financial interests, pursued the Longhorn Network and unquestionably contributed to the distrust that developed within the conference.

Those are facts.

But here's another fact:

So did everybody else.

Nebraska didn't leave for the Big Ten as an act of charity toward Iowa State.

Texas A&M didn't leave for the SEC to protect Baylor.

Colorado didn't join the Pac-12 because it was concerned about Kansas State's television revenue.

Missouri didn't join the SEC because it wanted to preserve the Big 12.

Every one of them acted in what it believed was its own best interest.

Texas did exactly the same thing.

So criticize Texas for the things Texas actually did. There's plenty to criticize.

But the cartoon version of Big 12 history where greedy Texas created unequal revenue sharing, stole everyone's television rights, invented the idea of individual third-tier rights and drove a bunch of unwilling schools out of the conference, simply isn't supported by the historical record.

The uncomfortable reality is that several of the schools that later complained about the Big 12's unequal financial structure helped preserve that structure when they thought it benefited them.

It became intolerable only when Texas figured out how to make substantially more money from it than they could.

That's not Texas mythology.

That's Big 12 history.

OU fans love the glory days of white only football.

You need a history lesson. Arky was the initial defection out of the Big 12 conference. Or the original SWC. Whenever.

Do you know why your school left?

Arky's lack of influence and lack of equal revenue. In short. Probably a lot more to unpack there. That's not a shot at you or Arky, BTW.

Add Nebraska, Colorado, A&M, and Mizzou to that also.

Larry Scott killed the PAC 12.

I am surprised the Larry Scott comment got downvoted. Just do the research. Maybe he is on this board.

They won’t like the facts, ruins the narrative they made up years ago

No one is reading that

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Tried that once and texas fricked it all up

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Texas politics!

You left out key pieces of information about the LHN:

1. A&M's issue wasn't the existence of the LHN. It was that TEX planned to air HS games on the network, thereby using it as a recruiting network. A&M appealed to the NCAA as we moved to the SEC. NCAA agreed with A&Ms position, thereby preventing the network from airing HS football games.

2. It was the LHN's failure to monetize TEX's value that forced your move to the SEC. ESPN was behind that move to get out of the finacial albatross that was the LHN. The cold truth is that it wasn't profitable because their wasn't meanigful content as a standalone network.

3. A&M also used Learfield as 3rd Tier TV rights to air limited A&M content, and continued to until we recently negotiated a new deal. However we forsaw that a standalone TV network wasn't profitable.