NORMAN — One of the highest grossing movies of the year was Iron Man 2. While it wasn’t as good as the first installment, it had its moments.
But there was one scene in the film that resonates strongly with what is going on today on the college football landscape.
It came during an exchange between bad guy Ivan Vanko, played by Mickey Rourke and Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, AKA, Iron Man.
“If you could make God bleed, people will cease to believe in Him,” Vanko said. “There will be blood in the water, and the sharks will come. All I have to do is sit here and watch, as the world will consume you...”
If you replace Vanko with Texas president William Powers Jr., then you have the position in which the Longhorns put Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe. Now UT may be on the verge of pulling off one of the biggest rope-a-dope since Muhammad Ali on George Foreman. But this time it will be on the entire college football landscape.
According to several media outlets, after week’s of leaning toward joining the Pac-10, the Longhorns are now seriously considering staying put in the Big 12. And what has brought about this amazing transformation in thinking? Money and power, of course.
Texas could possibly earn between $20 million and $25 million annually in television revenue, including money from its own network, in the reworked deal, according to Orangebloods.com.
From the very beginning the Longhorns have been wanting their own network deal. One they would be able to cash in on and keep for themselves.
So when talk of the Longhorns heading to the Pac-10 came about, we should have known it was a diversion. The Pac-10 has been planning to create its own conference network in which every member would split the revenue between themselves. UT could have had that deal in Big 12 long ago, but it blocked every effort to create a conference network.
What Texas did instead was show Beebe they were open to leaving the league. That set off a firestorm which has already seen Nebraska and Colorado break ranks.
This forced Beebe to come to Texas president William Powers Jr. with a special deal. Texas and Oklahoma would each receive at least $20 million annually from a new Big 12 TV contract, according to a report. If Texas A&M decided to also stay, they would join the Sooners and Longhorns in the $20 million bracket. Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri and Texas Tech stand to make between $14 million and $17 million.
But the clincher came when Beebe relented and will now allow schools to pursue their own distribution and network deals. This would enable Texas to create the Longhorn network which could net them up to an additional $5 million annually. The topper is what the $20 million in buyouts that Nebraska and Colorado had to pay will only be split between UT, OU and A&M. The other seven teams get the short end of the stick, but are allowed to stay in a major conference.
This entire plan seemed to be put together over the weekend. And it didn’t take long for Texas to all of a sudden see that the grass is not greener on the coast.
Monday evening, Powers told Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott they were staying put.
“University of Texas President Bill Powers has informed us that the 10 remaining schools in the Big 12 Conference intend to stay together,” Scott said in a statement. “We are excited about the future of the Pac-10 Conference and we will continue to evaluate future expansion opportunities under the guidelines previously set forth by our Presidents and Chancellors.”
Like dominoes, the rest of the teams fell into place. In a span of 30 minutes, the Aggies, then Sooners both agreed to also keep the Big 12 intact. OSU followed later in the evening.
“The decision to stay in the Big 12 represents a consensus position which resulted from a collaborative effort with our colleagues in the conference,” Oklahoma president David L. Boren and vice president and director of athletics Joe Castiglione said in a joint statement. “We value the strong working relationship that has been reaffirmed during this process among the conference members. We intend to work very hard to make the conference as lasting and dynamic as possible. We appreciate the respect and interest that has been shown to OU during this process.”
I am glad the Big 12 is still alive. I always thought the conference was too big to be swallowed up by an inferior league.
However, the way the whole thing went down is what bugs me. Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas A&M helped the Longhorns get their prized deal by allowing themselves to be used as pawns in Texas’ threat. And the conference lost two programs that it didn’t need to.
As of now, it looks like the Big 12 would will stay at 10 teams, with everyone playing each other. It would also do away with the Big 12 championship game because the NCAA says a league must have at least 12 teams for a title game. This will not make Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones very happy.
But all of that was secondary to keeping Texas happy. Beebe stated his goal was to keep the conference intact, no matter what. That meant giving Texas exactly what they wanted.
