40 Acres Sports

We have completed a quarter of the season and it’s time to start looking at conference match ups for the Horns. But before we get back to football, I want to look back at Realignment Armageddon 2.0. We can surmise that the Big 12 is back together and everything is back to normal. (Who believes that?) I do think we need to take a look at what was lost. Here is what I believe the PAC 16 would have looked like if Larry Scott and the rest of the universities on the left coast would have opened the door to the 4 schools in the East.

The pod system would have played out by having the schools in the East only having to travel to the western time zone twice a year for football. The teams would play a home and away series for two years and switch to the other remaining teams in that pod. The travel schedule for most of the other university sports would be quite different due to the size of this conference, but we all know that football pays the bills. The media markets that this league would boast would cover 12 of the major 28 markets including the biggies such as LA, SF, Houston, & DFW.

Here is a look at the possible football schedule using the pod system for the Longhorns for the 2012 and 2014 season. The odd years would result in the teams switching destinations to accommodate the home and away series. The OU game would still be played at the Cotton Bowl every year. The remaining 3 non-conference games of the season would be a host of cupcake teams to offset a brutal but highly entertaining regular season (goodbye A&M)!

2012 – Pac 16 conference games

@ Oregon
Washington St
@ Standford
UCLA
@ Colorado
Arizona
@ Texas Tech
OU
@ OK State

2014 – Pac 16 conference games

Oregon St.
@ Washington
USC
@ California
Utah
@ Arizona St.
@ Texas Tech
OU
@ OK State

The Pac 16 games would provide better match ups and great destinations over the Big 12. The conference titles games would be the former Pac 8 schools (NW/West) against the Mountain/East division schools in locales such as Pasadena, Tempe or maybe even at Cowboy Stadium. Texas wants to play in large television markets for exposure and to play in mostly southern climates to recruit elite high school talent. The cons to this new frontier is that it would be much more difficult to reach a BCS bowl game or even the National Title game under the PAC 16 scenario. It looks like the Big 12 will allow the Longhorn Network to exist as long as the Tier 1 and Tier 2 television rights are shared among all schools in the league. There are probably some hurt feelings and back room deals that still need to be ironed out and another team needs to be added for this Big 12 conference to work. I just thought you might want to see what was lost last week when the Pac 12 was said that their full right now. I did enjoy DeLoss Dodds assessment of Texas during this entire upheaval. “We are who we are.”

Thanks for following my WTH articles throughout the season. I appreciate the opportunity to rant about the greatest University sports program in the country. You can continue to follow comments on all of UT sports on twitter @40AcresSports or follow me @Horns1991. HOOK EM!!

1. reply to  #1

   

   SEC

   September 27th, 2011 at 9:17 am

   Texas Longhorn Conference
   Sisters Of The Poor Pod
   TCU
   SMU
   Houston
   Rice
   WTF Pod
   Stephen F Austin
   Lamar
   Texas St.
   Sam Houston St.
   WTH Pod
   Baylor
   Texas Tech
   Dallas Carter
   Odessa Permian
   Longhorn Pod
   Texas
   UTSA
   UTA
   UT Corpus Christi
   Texas will play each team in its pod twice (if they don’t have a football program those games will count as wins) and 2 teams from other pods providing that those teams: are not ranked, do not return more than 8 total starters, are not less than a 35 point underdog as of Wednesday of game week, promise not to play starters for 4 quarters. If Texas manages to finish .500 in league they will receive a BCS berth and a 6-2 or better conference record will result in an automatic BCS Championship game berth. As a way for Texas to help this startup conference thrive Texas will split all tier 8 revenue equally (rights to licensing for all “bull balls” trailer hitch attachments in Texas) while keeping 100% of tier 1-7 revenue.