Texas A&M to join SEC?
I'm totally with you about TCU. Them going to the Big East was a bit premature, IMO.
Except they could get an auto BCS bid in the easiest BCS conference. Actually, now that I think about it, they may wind up in the exact same boat: winning but getting no respect.
Says the Big Ten...who has 12...
This would make 13. Not that large.
no one said it's too large (that's what she said).
but seriously - they would need to add teams in multiples of two, so that they can continue to have balanced divisions and a conference championship game.
It's not too big, it would just be uneven.
Not to mention that the main appeal of having 12 teams is the championship game that it allows. There are no special benefits to having 13 or more teams. The only league that has ever attempted it in football (the WAC a decade ago) quickly found it to be too unwieldy and split in two.
Not this shit again. Seriously, just kick Texas out of the Big 12 already. They operate like an independent anyway, and the Longhorn Network totally handcuffs the league from creating a Big 12 network.
But who would watch the other nine teams in the league then?
Oklahoma and A&M (assuming they stick around) still pack a punch, and I think that once the bitterness subsides a little these teams will continue to schedule Texas because it brings them revenue. Texas is hurting the conference with this new network, and I think it's starting to outweigh the benefits of having them in the league.
OU and A&M might be able to float on their own or join other leagues, but no one would be able to do that. Kansas State is not a powerhouse, and like it or not, the little fish need Texas.
Texas maybe handcuffing itself in the long run.
I'm from Texas (in origin) and I can tell you that UT is probably the worst school in existance, as far as sister schools go. They are pure posion. They've destroyed every conference they've been in, and they WILL eventually destroy this incarnation of the Big-12. When it looked like they might go to the Pac-10, I told a friend of mine at USC "You don't want them." They are big, prestigious and a good school, but they set the standard in rampant greed. They would see the other Big-12 schools withdraw from Division I athletics before they ever considered revenue sharing. They would sell their mascot for extra cash. And they would look down on anyone who criticized them for doing so.
Much is made of the arrogance of Michigan and Michigan fans. Let me tell you, even if there is any truth to Michigan fans being more arrogant than, say, Alabama fans, at worst we run a distant second to the Longhorns.
I don't even want Michigan to be 2nd at arrogance.
Texas doesn't play well with others because it can. If it joined the Pac 12, SEC, or Big 10, it wouldn't have that level of leverage. The Big 12 needs Texas to work economically. The other three conferences work okay without any one school (except perhaps the Pac-12 without USC).
I think the whole saga really shows how attractive revenue sharing is to most schools. That everyone works together strengthens the whole.
I agree with the sentiment, but the other 9 programs in the Big 12 don't. Texas is the reason why there is still a Big 12. The remaining teams were more than willing to fork over more cash to Texas if it meant not having to find another conference.
Teams like Baylor, Iowa State and Kansas State stand to/stood to lose from a blow up of the Big 12.
Texas A&M is like a skanky girlfriend. Shower her with some attention, and she'll come running. Despite her ten-year anniversary with the Big 12 coming up
Little brothers to the core. And both have the odd habit of being able to beat anyone on any given Saturday, but then lose to anyone the next... the only thing consistent about them is that they are perpetually not consistent.
Maybe now. Historically A&M was just as prestigious as Texas, as far as football went, and had an equally large and possibly even more fanatical fanbase. Whereas the Spartans have pretty much always been in our shadow, A&M only became Texas' Little Bro through protracted decline.
The closest equivalent to Sparty, I think, is Oklahoma State. They share a state with a historical power (OU) and the "Bedlam" game means everything to them. But to OU, the biggest game is the one with the school to the south (Texas).Every now and then Ok St upsets OU, but the pecking order in that state is clear.
Well I'm glad T Boone Pickens belongs to the other juggalo tribe.
Until the other members in the Big 8/12 get some parity, they are going to yearly threaten to leave. A&M won't leave in the short term because they got a decent deal. Long term? That conference is bound to implode.
Another reason I think the Big 10 will consider going to 14 teams at some point.
Feinbaum's radio show has had some reputable SEC reporters parroting this the past month... sounds like A&M is hedging its bets two fold:
1) realisation that UT's new TV deal is going to leave the rest of the Big12 behind
2) that TV deal may allow UT to break off and go independent, leaving the Big 12 in a heap of hurt
A&M's potential move would put it in position now to be valuable to the SEC by allowing a SEC presence in revenue rich Texas, provide another natural rival for Arkansas, and pave the way for Oklahoma to come the SEC on the SEC's terms if the Big 12 does indeed break up.
As to the odd number of SEC teams if A&M joins, adjoining rumor on SEC boards is that A&M would come as a package deal with one of the other state of Texas teams like Baylor or Texas Tech to appease the Texas legislature. You then would have probably Alabama and Auburn shift to the SEC East.
I think Mizzou made it pretty obvious they were interested in joining the B1G. If the dominoes start to fall, Texas can't risk being independent like Notre Dame and both will need to find homes or risk being on the outside looking in.
Texas is all about greed. There is no way they would join a conference that has revenue sharing. They also want everything to go their way, which is one of the reasons Nebraska was so eager to leave the Big 12.
Not that geography makes a bit of difference to conferences these days, but LAWL.
Although, Tuberville has been pulling in some good players, all with clean recruiting tactics, I presume (LOL). What really gets me is the fact that fans here think he would actually stick around if the SEC came calling next year. Just as they finally get over Leach, BOOM Tuberville bolts. Harsh.
...until I saw this comment. TTU's firing of Mike Leach reminds me of the MSU administration meddling with Nick Saban until he bolted. The mechanics were different, but the intellect was the same. And neither school's football team was nearly as good afterward.
I think Oklahoma is always going to have an Oklahoma St. problem. I don't think state bigwigs are going to be eager to see OSU get left out in the cold.
Read somewhere that the secondary rumor is Tex. Tech, Oklahoma and OSU, plus a team to be named later to the Pac-12.
As to the odd number of SEC teams if A&M joins, adjoining rumor on SEC boards is that A&M would come as a package deal with one of the other state of Texas teams like Baylor or Texas Tech to appease the Texas legislature.
Actually what I've heard is that Texas Tech wants to go to the Pac 12, and might be trying to take other teams along with them. Supposedly this is due to ESPN telling Tech that their game with Texas will be on the Longhorn Network or not on ESPN at all, and Tech wants out. This A&M rumor is probably a reaction to that.
If the Texas+9 does dissolve, you can count on Baylor being taken care of. Baylor has substantial influence in the Texas gov, which is why they were brought into the Big-12 over TCU and others, and one of the reasons the Pac-16 deal was scuttled- The Tex. Gov. was trying to tack Baylor onto the deal instead of Colorado. The legislator will force someone to take Baylor if they want A&M or Tech, or Texas if they don't go independant.
I've heard this before about Baylor. Why do they have so much influence in the state government?
I couldn't give you a perfect answer. It's a good school, by any standard, and has a lot of prestige in Texas. I don't know how it does in the various rankings these days, but it holds a lot of clout in-state. They have a lot of representation in state government. My mother was actually a Baylor Bear, from several generations of Baylor Bears. She wanted me to go there for undergrad, and then for law school, and I broke her heart twice over by declining to do so.
They are a very proud group, and they take great lengths to support each other. I'm not sure if it's the quality of the education, the in-state prestige, or the clannishness which gives them their influence. One way or another, there are a disproportionate number of Bears in the state government. Ann Richards, the govorner of Texas before W., at the time of the wrangling for the creation of the Big XII, was a Baylor Bear. She would have sunk the whole deal before she saw baylor left behind, so she had TCU thrown on that grenade instead. And that, children, is why TCU all but said they would keep Baylor out of the Mountain West when the Big 12 started falling apart, and why Baylor and TCU hate each other about as much as two schools can.
Baylor is an elite Baptist university so many TX politicians either did undergrad or law school at Baylor. Given TX residents' affinity for the religious right, the average TX resident and most Baylor grads are cut from the same cloth, as far as ideology goes.
That's...partially true. Baylor is to Baptists what BYU is to Mormons, to some degree. On the other hand, Baylor famously cut its ties to the more militant wing of the Baptist Church (which was trying to control curriculum, etc.). This was done largely to improve the quality of the school's education. The school is still fairly conservative, but they have tempered themselves from the lunatic fringe of the political landscape. So it's wrong to dismiss them collectively as being representative of the Texas Gov. notoriously ideologically driven ways. Ann Richards was a democrat, after all, and while she wasn't an Ann Arbor democrat, she was fairly liberal for the state.
Since someone thought this was flamebait, let me be more clear: I'm not actually making aspersions against the Souther Baptist party. I am refering to a specific event in 1991 when Baylor changed their charter because of concerns of the fallout of a conservative vs. moderate/liberal civil war withing the actual body of the Southern Baptist Convention. Baylor did not like the outcome. In Texas, or at least for Baylor folk and Baptists, this was something of a line in the sand moment. I am not trying to take sides or criticize anyone's faith or lack thereof. I am simply trying to put Baylor's cultural import in the proper perspective as I understand it. Sorry to whoever took offense.
whoops, DP
This kind of makes sense from some angle. I don't think expansion is done. The BCS agreement ends in 2014 and I think we're going to see conference realignment where the big schools sign a revenue sharing agreement soley for their benefit and many of the schools in the ACC and Big East are banished to non-BCS status (or whatever the new elite group is called). People like Baylor, USF, etc end up in C-USA like conferences or MWC level if they're lucky.
Basically the SEC, PAC, and B1G survive, while the higher end teams from the AAC/Big East/Big12 form some kind of mutant conference or merge into another conference.
What everyone wants to avoid though I think is another repeat of the Big12 creation events, where one conference took in another indigestable block of another conference and it let to culture warfare (Big 8 taking in SWC refugees). That's while the B1G took in Nebraska solo while the PAC grabbed Colorado and Utah. Take a couple of teams now and a couple of teams in 2014 during the realignment shuffle so that the new guys are merged into the current conference instead of forming their own voting block and causing trouble.
So the SEC may be looking to grab A&M and some ACC team (one for each division of the SEC), merge them in and then expand again in 2014. That then sets the stage for Texas to the PAC while the B1G adds two more.
Basically a lot of people say at the very end of this expansion cycle people got cold feet. It suggests the big name schools want to condense and set themselves up to not share athletic dollars with the lesser schools, but they just couldn't take the plunge. So now perhaps we see smaller trickles of movement setting up the stage for a 2014 shift that is more planned and less abrupt (al la Texas + 5 teams bolting to the PAC).
All I can say is "No Texas in the B1G". After this whole Longhorn network and their unbalanced revenue sharing, keep them the hell out. They'd just end up as a cancer, no matter how much prestige they brought. Although the Pelini meltdown if Texas joined would be amazing.
Edit: As Wolverine in Exile says right above me, Texas going indy and leaving the rest of the Big12 as refugees could also be prompting this.
and why I never wanted them anyhow. They simply do not give a flying fuck about any other school and athletic program beyond themselves, and will do literally anything as long as it benefits themselves. Trying to keep Texas happy in the Big 10 would be as impossible as keeping a relentlessly selfish, single-mindedly gold-digging but smokin' red hot girlfriend happy for more than 15 minutes. The first chance they get they'd be boning some other conference for a better deal. Sort of like dealing with Texas as a state....
Yeah, if you're an adminstrator at any of the other Big12 schools and you're not looking to get out before Texas screws you further, you're not doing your job.
It would be amazing of the rest of the Big12 managed to find places to land, dissolved the conference and left Texas holding the bag/scrambling to schedule C-USA teams.
I think Texas will be fine no matter what (which is why they act like assholes; they know they can get away with it). Even if the rest of the Big 12 puts up a united front and tells them to go to hell, they can go independent. That would increase the value of their TV network even further, and they have the cachet and alumni base to cultivate a national following. They might have some trouble with scheduling, but they should be able to negotiate open-ended deals with all the other 1-A independents (ND, BYU, Army, and Navy), which would take care of 1/3 of their schedule. For the rest, I'm sure they can find enough teams willing to play them if they agree to some home-and-aways.
In short, there's a reason why Texas is the 500-lb gorilla in all of this.
In addition, it looks like Texas doesn't want to just go independent. If they wanted to, they could do it today. They are the guy at work throwing shit around in order to get fired instead of quitting. They are being very obnoxious toward the other teams in their conference, seemingly with the strategy of making the conference to fall down around them, "forcing" them to go independent because no other conference will put up with them.
It's actually all quite brilliant.
for Texas to stay with the Big 12 until their own network has been up a couple years and they have a better idea of what their revenue stream will be with it.
Yeah, they could just go independent now, but it wouldn't be smart until they see how their longhorn network affects revenue.
The big question becomes how much can Texas make off of their own TV network?
Notre Dame can remain an independent because they make bank off of NBC. If ND's TV contract with NBC dried up and no other network was interested, I'm guessing ND's interest in joining a conference would go up quite a bit.
Being an independent in football may be fine for Texas. But what would they do for every other sport? If the Big XII dissolved which conference will take Texas for everything but football?Texas fields a lot of teams, maybe the most. It may not be simple to find homes for them.
I'm guessing most of the other schools (outside of Oklahoma and A&M and possibly Missouri) aren't high on the other big conferences (Big10, SEC and Pac-10) list of teams they'd like to add.
I'm sure the MWC, WAC and Conference USA would be happy to add some teams from the Big 12, but I'm guessing the teams from the Big 12 look at going to those conferences as a last resort.