The Big 12 Lives - But Still Has a Texas Problem

[Sid]

Commentary: A&M, TV deal UT happy - for now. It won't last.
by Samuel McKewon
June 14, 2010

It’s going to take years to truly unravel what happened over the last several months.

The “savior” will now get to own and control its Longhorn Sports Network while Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri lick cowboy boots. They’ll be thankful, of course - what choice do they have? - but they’ll be hired hands on UT‘s ranch.

The “Texas problem” is never going away. Not for the Big 12, not for Beebe - who will try to jump ship at the first sign of shore - and, perhaps worst of all, not for Texas, whose appetite is insatiable and antithetical, frankly, to good sense.

The efficiency with which UT controlled and spun the story through the media is startling.

And mark these words: Texas will test the open market again - with its Longhorns Sports Network firmly in place - and present itself to whichever conference is willing to bend its rules to fit UT under the umbrella.

And in a decade, you’ll see why. NU will be in a coffee shop talking research with its new friends. The Big 12 will be in another barroom brawl. Texas will be standing on a table, looking to dive into the scrum, a broken bottle in one hoof, a money clip in another.

http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2010/06/14/4c16f930c2b32

For any morons who may be out there, please don't give me the sour grapes BS.

 

[OU84]

One thing mentioned on talk radio here in KC this am during an interview with Bohls was why did Texass drag this out if they knew up front and early that the Pac-10 would not let them have their own tv network

 

[Cleavon Little]

Opinions, conjecture, not a single fact in any of those quotes. Flowery crappy writing about coffee shops and barroom brawls. I had no idea this was the last restructuring for all time, and NU won and we lost. It happens again in a few years, so what. No worse off than we are now. I had no idea everyone was so hot to be a Pac-10 fan.

How will Texas own us? They gonna get rules that only apply to them? They get more schollies due to the new Big Texan rules? All good recruits must first report to UT and sign a letter of unintent before they leave?

Do we have to give them our money? Don't we get about the same on the new deal? Are we gonna get the UT network instead of ESPN? All OU activities on television cancelled for UT track and field programming? Big Al and BBJ only report on UT news?

I predict a lot of Epsom baths tonight with all this knee jerking. Now, if Beebe can't put a TV deal together, then we can all talk about how stupid this all was as they immediately dissolve it next year and we all do it over again.

 

[r2b1]

since we have put ourselves in the position of looking like ut's b**** in this whole conference fiasco, we better make them our b**** on the field in the next four years. what an embarrassment....

 

[MichSooner]

since we have put ourselves in the position of looking like ut's b**** in this whole conference fiasco, we better make them our b**** on the field in the next four years. what an embarrassment....

We did not handle very well the PR aspect of looking like Texas' b**** even though I think we got our needs taken care of in the deal. I suspect this more than anything has riled up Sooner fans.

 

[skyvue]

We did not handle very well the PR aspect of looking like Texas' b**** even though I think we got our needs taken care of in the deal. I suspect this more than anything has riled up Sooner fans.

That's the only aspect of this whole deal I have a problem with. Even if Joe C. had every intention of working in tandem with texas and going wherever they went, I wish he'd been a bit more subtle in acknowledging that fact.

But everything cited up that there that texas can do? So can we. And if the smaller programs have to lick texas's boots, as the writer suggested, they'll be licking ours, too.