PAC-16 REALIGNMENT

No chance at Notre Dame…none…at all. There is little to no chance of Baylor and Mizzou, as Waco isn’t big enough and Mizzou wants in the B1G TEN. I imagine it will come down to Larry Scott seeing what type of extra money he can bilk out of ESPN for OU/OSU/KU/KSU and deciding if it’s enough to make some more dough. There are no inherit advantages to being in a super conference, and if the Pac-12 is the last remaining 12 team conference, it could be good owning two entire time zones worth of TV’s without having small timers to be pissed off and wreak havoc.

and won’t be invited.

I don’t know if I buy what Wilner’s sources are selling. The first UT to Pac10 talk was supposedly brought up BY DODDS a few years back. They seriously considered joining last year, and if OU goes, I think UT ultimately does as well.

After seeing the virtual irrelevance of ND as an independent in the BCS era, why on earth would a regular BCS bowl player want to replicate that?

First off, Baylor will never be invited to the Pac – no chance. No non-secular institution will be invited to join. Secondly, while Mizzou really wants in to the Big Ten, that invite is not available, so they are focused on joining the SEC along with A&M.

As for Texas, Oklahoma and the Pac – it is indeed a big, fascinating chess match of competing interests and with all parties holding some amount of leverage.

Texas doesn’t want to give up ownership (and thus all the revenues that come with it) of their Longhorn Network. They don’t have much interest in a set-up where all schools split revenue equally, even if the Pac offers a higher overall payday than what Texas can currently bring in. Texas likes being the kingpin – they were in the SWC, they are in the Big-“12”. They like calling the shots. That wouldn’t happen in the Pac-16.

Oklahoma is getting tired of being bossed around, and they like the idea of aligning with the Pac. Their leverage is they think that if they (and by proxy Oklahoma State) leave the Big-“12”, that conference is kaput. I do think they would ideally like to join up with the Pac, but if they can use the threat of leaving as means to get a bigger slice of the Big-“12” pie, they’d settle for that too.

Texas knows that the Pac probably isn’t interested in expanding to only 14 due to the scheduling and alignment logistical nightmares that would come with that number. They also figure the Pac isn’t going to expand to 16 unless Texas joins Oklahoma as one of the 4 new teams, because there aren’t any other Big-“12” options that would bring enough revenue to keep the current TV payouts from dropping. So their leverage is calling Oklahoma’s bluff unless the Pac gives in to all of their demands about conditions to join the conference. And they claim they can keep the conference going even if the Oklahoma schools & Mizzou join A&M out of town, though everyone knows such a conference would be 2nd tier.

The Pac would love to secure Oklahoma & Texas as a preemptive strike in the expected super-conferences of the future, since they really have few other attractive options due to geography and their own standards of what constitutes an acceptable school. But they don’t want to change their hard-fought equal revenue sharing deal, and they are perfectly content with the huge new TV deal they struck and the potential revenue they’ll see from their Pac-12 Networks. They also don’t want to get bossed around by Texas, so Larry Scott has made it known via Wilner that the conference is perfectly happy with the status quo.

I hope Scott sticks to his guns. Only bring in Texas if they agree to all the same terms as every other team in the conference, i.e. fully equal TV revenue sharing, and with divisional alignments & schedules that are palatable to all parties (and this is the other factor that will be hard to overcome).

The one thing that gives me pause is the fact that Scott promised L.A. to Colorado in order to get them to join. That was a horrible precedent. Colorado is a nice addition, but they should not have been given that promise, one that came at the expense of the PNW schools.

I’m a little surprised that there’s been almost no talk of Texas and the Big Ten in the major media. Everything seems to assume that it’s the Pac or independence for Texas. I’m not so sure. The Big Ten provides even more academic snob appeal, they are likely to surpass the Pac in terms of TV deals the next time they renegotiate, and Texas joining up would likely be accompanied by Notre Dame finally giving in and joining up – that’s a hell of a league right there from a TV appeal standpoint.

In both cases Texas will have to accept fully equal TV revenue sharing, which will require revamping the structure of the Longhorn Network. But the Big Ten provides Texas a better fit from a time zone perspective and probably not as much travel expenses as a Pac-16.

Just something to watch out for – while I expect Oklahoma to join the Pac (and probably Oklahoma State with them), I don’t think we should assume Texas has little choice but to follow.

Team Speed Kills is reporting that Texas is talking to the ACC, who, for starters, will let Texas keep the Longhorn network intact.

If it’s negotiating tactic, it’s a bad one. Take her, Texas. The ACC doesn’t have teeth and she’ll “entertain” your friends, too.

(Read: Baylor might finally get lucky!)

Texas views the ACC as a replacement for what they had with the Big 12: they see a group of lesser schools whom they can dominate politically, financially, and athletically. The Big Ten, the Pac-12, and the SEC are not conferences that they can boss around. The ACC sees Texas as a powerhouse (which it is) that will give it an major infusion that will help it stave off the SEC, but it will not. Texas will treat the ACC schools in the same way that it treated its fellow Big 12 members — as a cancer eating away at the heart and body and mind and soul of the conference — and, within a decade, the schools that once comprised the ACC will be members of the SEC or the Big East, which, if Texas joins the ACC, will become the fourth “Mega Conference.”

I don’t think Texas stands to gain anything by flirting with the ACC. Both the Big Ten and the Pac-12 have made it clear that the Longhorn Network goes or gets subsumed. They’ve made it clear that they’re for equal revenue sharing. They’ve made it clear that they don’t want Texas’s BS. What does the “threat” of Texas going to the ACC do to change any of that? All it proves is that the people who run the ACC are morons and that Texas, given its druthers, wants to continue behaving as it has always behaved.

Consider Baylor’s recent actions. In the face of the Big 12 collapse, rather than positioning themselves as a cool school who would be an asset to you, [insert midmajor conference here], they announced themselves as lawsuit happy nutjobs whom no conference in their right mind would want to welcome aboard. Texas is pulling a similar move. Rather than saying, “Oops; we nutpunched Nebraska and Colorado and TAMU and Oklahoma for all they were worth until we drove them out of the Big 12, and that was a mistake; we need a home, a real one, and we’re willing to learn from our blundering days in the Big 12 and behave as a responsible member institution,” Texas is, instead, telling the big conferences that they have learned nothing and that they want continue their reckless ways.

Texas is poison. I think the commissioners and presidents of the Big Ten, the SEC, and the Pac-12 are smart enough to see that. The ACC stands to make a deal with the devil, but I’ve never liked the ACC and I won’t miss them. I just hope that Texas and Miami don’t figure out a way to breed.

Pacific Takes has mock ups of some sample pod schedules up this morning. They’re well done and worth a look.

This sounds like things are moving.

If this article is correct, one of the biggest hurdles (the Longhorn network) is close to being dealt with.