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.
Northwest Pod
Oregon state
Oregon
Washington
Washington State
West Pod
Stanford
California
UCLA
USC
Mountain Pod
Arizona
Arizona State
Colorado
Utah
East Pod
Texas
Texas Tech
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
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!!
The University of Texas has a contract with ESPN for the Longhorn Network that pays it at least $300 million over the next 20 years.
A contract.
For those who don’t know what that word means Wikipedia defines a contract as, “a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties with mutual obligations.” You can’t just decide you don’t want to be in a contract anymore because you feel like it. There are penalties and repercussions.
What no one (both journalists and message board experts) seems to mention when they suggest Texas should head to the new Pac 16 and dump LHN is that it may be worse than sacrificing millions in possible revenue. Texas might owe ESPN some huge sum of money for breaching the contract if they want to kill it.
Not only do UT, DeLoss Dodds, Bill Powers, and the BOR need to decide to modify Longhorn Network but ESPN would as well. What’s in it for them to do so when one of the reasons Texas got such a good deal on LHN was ESPN didn’t want super conferences??
Video from ESPN on the latest in conference realignment caused by the Aggies running away from Texas to the SEC: