Read an article about team records after moving to different Conferences and their dismal records. I got to thinking what kind of money could the old Big XII had received if they had stayed together, for football rights in today’s market. $40 to$50 million a year?
What might have been?
- Thread starter dafarmer
- Start date
texas 100 million OU 80 million. everyone else 15 million
Tom Osborne is one of the worst people in the history of this nation (if not the world), but I’d like to see what would have become of the league if only Texas and A&M had joined in ‘96
Which old Big 12?
Version 1 (1996-2010)- OGs
Version 2 (2011) - without CU/NU
Version 3 (2012-22) - without A&M/MU, with TCU/WVU
Version 4 (2023) - with OU/UT and the Bowlsby 4
I feel like the real opportunity could have been if the original big 12 had partnered up with the original pac-10. Merge as a business unit but keep operating as mostly separate conferences (with extra scheduling arrangements between teams). Instead it was death by a thousand cuts for both conferences.
That combined entity would have owned 95% of football west of the Mississippi.
I find myself thinking of this A LOT.
1. You keep every other conference out of Texas in a meaningful way, this means that not only do you lock down a gigantic recruiting advantage over other conferences, you get the second most populated state and probably have the most viewership in central time zone or at least similar to Big Ten in central time.
2. Add strategically in the other three time zones or at least in mountain/pacific. The Pac's downfall would have happened no matter what, just too many programs with small or unengaged fanbases. If original Big 12 made some (not all) of the 8 moves we just did it's hard to imagine any league being significantly more valuable.
The original 12 plus even 2-4 adds from other time zones (or as @alarson said a total Pac merge before 12 started getting carved up) would have to be at least in the ballpark of Big Ten and SEC. Basketball might not have gotten supercharged since bad basketball programs left, but the conference would still have averaged out to 1 or 2 most years. I'm guessing we've always averaged out to #2 in football and it's really only going forward that the Big Ten has a chance to have a better football product top to bottom.
Could start from 1 or 2.
The only key is being the only major conference in Texas in a major way. It's the ultimate base from which to branch out.
Instead Texas/OU and various failed Pac leaders decided it would be good for the SEC to own Texas in addition to the rest of the south. Brilliant move.
Possible we're adding TCU/Baylor and asking TV partners to imagine them as great instead of having TCU and Baylor as P5 teams that have already been in the top 10 often, one having just been a Big 12 team in NC game.
Or how much different would ISU be with a B1G west schedule every year....
Are you too young to remember the big 12 north? You did have the bug west schedule and pissed it down your legs.
Kinda wish we had it now tbh, especially with the style of ball we play nowadays.
Lol that’s a weird one to come in hot with. We were little kids at the kid table. You’re supposedly adults at the kids table and still struggle. Easy there big guy.
Other teams couldn't recruit Texas when it was the old Big 12. Once it got established and going, from about 2000 on, Texas recruits went predominately to only Big 12 schools. Michigan couldn't recruit there, USC-nope, SEC, hardly. Even Arkansas, that made a pretty good living with Texas recruits when they were in the SWC, couldn't recruit Texas very well. The old Big 12 was getting too big for the their britches. Non football brand names in the Big 12 like Mangino's KU teams, Pinkle Missouri program, of course Snyder at KSU, Air Raid at Tech, Gundy's OSU teams and even Baylor towards the end got really really good at football. The SEC and Big 10 needed to stop the momentum, and in the end, they did. Probably the biggest strategic mistake the old Big 12 made was not doing the conference network when the idea was presented to them. Shortly thereafter, the Big 10 went with the idea that Wieberg originally pitched to the Big 12.
Bolded: was there a rationale for this beyond 'because Texas told us not to' or similar? Were their hands tied by other networks?
How do you as a conference not see that as a huge help in stability?
If anything can save a conference it’s a conference network (see PAC-12)…
Weiberg could never get more than 8 votes, and he needed 9. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess which 4 were the holdouts. At the time, BTN was the only major conference network. Big 12 would have been second, years ahead of SEC, ACC, and Pac.
The problem there wasn't the conference network, but the extremely poor execution of it without a media partner involved.
back then though is was a good idea, not when the Pac decided to do it. The market had changed by the time the PAC tried to do it.