Editor's note: To read the counter-point to this issue, click here.
Amid conference realignment rumors, OU took a back seat to their much more burnt orange counterpart.
Bevo and his company at the University of Texas held the college football world hostage for two weeks as UT Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds and President William Powers met with every potential suitor that thought itself worthy to approach the Longhorns.
The frontrunner to stage the great coup-de-tat of the Big 12, and effectively render it void as a power conference, was Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott.
It became all but a foregone conclusion that the Longhorns would head west and form the first known super-conference in college sports.
Then Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe did the unthinkable, and constructed a plan that would keep the Longhorns in the conference.
Beebe’s plan included a new TV deal for the Big 12 that could be worth upward of $20 million.
The plan promised to pay both OU and UT a large share of the revenue generated by the TV contract, with a trickle-down to the remaining eight members.
The plan also would allow each of the 10 remaining universities to establish their own cable TV networks, which could generate nearly $5 million a year for each school.
After deliberations with parties from both the Pac-10 and Big 12, Texas decided it was in the best interest of the league for it to stay in the Big 12. But in Texas, “best interest” has a singular ring to it.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that UT is looking out for No. 1. What should be unsettling is the fact that the country expected the Sooner nation to be in-cahoots with the Longhorns.
Where the University of Texas went, OU was expected to follow.
It was assumed that it is in the Sooners’ (as well as Oklahoma State and Texas A&M’s) best interest to walk hand-in-hand with UT, like little brothers who cannot be trusted to cross the street without a chaperone.
Never once was it assumed that OU might decide to stay in the Big 12 and stymie a Big 12 hemorrhage of schools or better yet, that it might have flirted with the SEC the way the Aggies had, threatening to break their 100-year rivalry with the Longhorns.
Among the disloyalty that every school has shown the other in the Big 12 (save Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State) OU was expected to be loyal to Texas.
To the country, Texas is running the Big 12 and after the dysfunctional chaos that has festered and the musical chairs rendition it has gone through in the past week, it’s hard to argue against the point.
The fact that OU was never in the driver’s seat for conference expansion talks is disconcerting and very revealing of the amount of clout garnered by the OU athletic department and the reputation it currently holds among other conferences.
OU played second fiddle to its hated rival Texas in the biggest story of college athletics this year.
Sooner nation, it’s come to that.
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matthewmurrayday 1 year, 11 months ago
R. J. Young,
I'd rather have burnt orange leading the way than a bunch of frigging cokeheads.