re: SEC gifts Texas a National Championship!

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SEC loves you and gave you the easiest schedule ever playing the 4 worst teams in the conference: Miss State, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Arkansas.

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You can even expand this to the 5 worst teams and add Oklahoma.

The melt is because the SEC is giving you a Natty…. Don’t blow your one and only chance….

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The melt is because the SEC is giving you a Natty…. Don’t blow your one and only chance….

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Only chance? They had the same week schedule last year. They won the natty, right?

at Florida
Dallas v Oklahoma (UT-A is home team)
at Kentucky
at Mississippi State

in consecutive Saturdays -

context matters -

UT Austin's easy schedule was 2024 when it only left TX to play 2 SEC games - with one being in Nashville -

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You didn't have a choice but to follow us to the SEC after your desire to go independent like Notre Dame failed because your attempt to brand yourself nationally with ESPN sank like a stone

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That's more of a troll than a fact.

Texas was going to start up its own network. That was Deloss Dodd's chief vision for a decade or more. When Texas made seriouis inquiries into joining the Pac, thereby leaving the ESPN ecosystem, ESPN wanted to put a quick kibosh to that. So they made a proverbial offer that couldn't be refused. $300 million for 15 years, with a lot of it back loaded. But here was the kicker. No upfront or ongoing expenses. It would be fully funded, staffed, and produced by ESPN. The whole thing was a turn key operation.

Originally ESPN was going to show high school games, but several members of the Big 12 - including OU - threw their arms up about that, feeling like it was a clear recruiting advantage to be showing high school games on the Longhorn Network.

Then ESPN priced the LHN too high for distribution outlets. For example, it wasn't available on Comcast, the largest cable network in the country at the time, and the exclusive cable network for several major cities in Texas, including Houston. They did sign an agreement with Cox, which served the Austin area. For me personally to get access I had to sign up for a series of streaming services, including Sony television, then when that shut down the Sling Orange sports package (no relation to LHN). I happened to sign up for both Blue and Orange, which I still have. The point is, getting LHN if you weren't in the Austin metro proved challenging over the years, but ESPN didn't care, and UT didn't have any control over it because they signed over control for a whole lot of money.

But the lack of ways to actually access LHN meant it was never going to be a financial success. But that wasn't the point for ESPN. They got exactly what they wanted. They kept UT in the ESPN fold, and then helped to secure them a place in the SEC after ESPN had negotiated their gargantuan deal with the SEC.

This idea Texas was ever going independent was at most a bargaining chip Texas used to get their way with either the Big 12 or the SEC, depending on who they were negotiating with. But that was never going to be a long term solution. Deloss Dodds may have contemplated it, but he retired in 2013. Del Conte nor BOR chairman Kevin Eltife ever seriously considered it.

Yet they refuse to take it

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4 worst teams in the conference: Miss State, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Arkansas.

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How did that work for Bama against the Der's?

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All that to watch replays of the 2005 Natty

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I've never minded all the replays of that game.

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Went from dominating a conference to permanent irrelevance.

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That remains to be seen.

But like Arkansas in the SWC, remaining in the Big 12 guaranteed irrelevance in the future of college football. Admission into the SEC doesn't ensure it, but it gives each program in the SEC a seat at the table.

I think both Texas and OU could have stayed in the Big 12 and still had a say in what went on in the future, but their position would have been weakened by their conference affiliation, and the conference office never would have been in a position to espouse wholeheartedly the view of OU and Texas as haves, versus the athletic department budget have nots of the rest of the conference.

I don't think either school had a real choice. After the two earthquake television contracts both the Big 10 and the SEC signed, it became clear either you joined one of those two conferences or you'd be playing second fiddle in the near future.

I honestly didn’t know Arkansas was so close last year. Please beat them this season