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ALL EYES ARE UPON
TEXAS
The Big 12 Conference at the
moment shares much resemblance with the Holy Roman Empire in its
dying days. It’s neither Big, nor 12, and pretty soon, it might not
be a conference anymore.
Blame that on the Longhorn
Network.
The University of Texas’
fledgling television network is reason No. 1 for all the current
upheaval in college football.
As a result, the expansions by the Big Ten and Pac-12 last year are
merely a prelude to a much bigger revolution to come.
Chafing at the founding of the
Longhorn Network and the preferential treatment Texas would be
getting in the new, weakened Big 12, Texas A&M finally had had
enough and decided to leave the conference, at any cost. Oklahoma,
equally not amused, will soon make its westward haul and land in the
Pac-12 (14?), taking Oklahoma State with it.
With Pitt and Syracuse
officially moving to the ACC, Texas’ only other safety chute has
been effectively closed. Now the Longhorns are faced with two
choices, and what they decide to do will finally complete the
realignment frenzy, perhaps for the foreseeable future.
Texas’ contract with ESPN
stipulates that the Longhorn Network
may only be disbanded if Texas leaves the Big 12, meaning that
Texas cannot "save" the Big 12 in its current state. UT and OU can
still save their rivalry – but only as fellow members of the Pac-16,
with the Longhorn Network aborted in its infancy.
So the fork in the road is at
hand for Texas. What it decides will bring down the rest of the
dominoes.
If it chooses to go Route 1,
keeping the Longhorn Network in a reconstituted Big 12, this is how
the new conferences most likely would shape up:
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Big 12 – Bring the old
Southwest Conference band back together, replacing A&M, OU and OSU
with TCU, SMU and BYU, and possibly adding Houston and Tulsa to
round it back up to 12
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Pac-14 – Add OU and OSU
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Big Ten – Do nothing
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SEC – Add West Virginia and
Texas A&M
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ACC – Add Pittsburgh, Syracuse,
Rutgers and UConn to become the only 16-team conference
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Big East – Add Central Florida,
Memphis, East Carolina, Temple and have Villanova move up to D-IA to
form an eight-team conference
In this scenario, the Big 12
may barely have enough juice to preserve its automatic bid in the
BCS. The Big East likely would lose its, leaving just five auto-bid
conferences.
Or, Texas may decide to junk
the Longhorn Network and cut its losses, joining OU and OSU a year
after Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott made his ambitious powerplay:
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Big 12 – Effectively
disintegrates, with each member fleeing to a new conference
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Pac-16 – Take OU, OSU, Texas
and Texas Tech
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Big Ten – Add Notre Dame and
Kansas
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SEC – Take Missouri and Florida
State, in addition to Texas A&M and West Virginia
-
ACC – Add Pittsburgh, Syracuse,
Rutgers, UConn and South Florida to form a 16-team conference
-
Big East – Add Baylor, Iowa
State, Kansas State and keep TCU, plus Central Florida and Villanova
to have eight teams, though now much more oriented toward the
Midwest than the East
In this scenario, there will be
also just five BCS conferences: three with 16 members (Pac-16, SEC
and ACC) and one with 14 members (Big Ten). If this should occur, we
might be done with realignment for quite awhile.
(And this is making your head
spin, check out our helpful
Conference Affiliation spreadsheet)
So it’s all up to Texas and
what will it do? The guess here is that the Longhorns will abandon
their eponymous network to accept a membership in the Pac-16. The TV
venture so far has been a disaster, with prep games barred from
being shown on it and few cable/satellite operators willing to take
it on. When
DirecTV openly questioned whether two UT football games
constitutes "a network," the message seemed to be loud and clear.
Maybe they can show "A Bridge
Too Far" on the night the Longhorn Network bids its farewell.
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