https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/big-12-commish-goes-on-offensive-over-texas-oklahoma-leaving-for-sec-it-makes-no-sense

I like how everything that doesn't fit his agenda is "crazy" or "makes no sense".

What's crazy is him not understanding why nobody worth a damn wants to remain in his league.

Last minute plea to stay.

His comments must mean this all is getting finalized for next year entry/exit.

I'd take bowlsby over Sankey any day.

^yep. a lot of short sighted people running college athletics.

OU and sips were going to go somewhere eventually. It's in our best interest that it is in our conference.

Well Dallas radio this morning, maybe somewhat jokingly, called OU's win over Kansas a good win. BDF is skrong

twk said:

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TexAg15 said:

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OU and sips were going to go somewhere eventually. It's in our best interest that it is in our conference.

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OU and Texas posed no threat to the SEC. No other move would have been nearly as beneficial to OU and Texas as going to the SEC. OU and Texas in the Big Ten, ACC, or Pac-12 wouldn't have been a problem for the SEC, and none of those was likely to happen. OU and Texas bluffed Sankey into making a defensive move which screwed up the playoff expansion. If Sankey had held his nerve, OU and Texas would have been stuck in the Big XII well into the next decade, and the playoff expansion plan would have been approved.

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Exactly. Bowlsby'sanalysis depends on the playoff expansion not getting done. The survival of the Rose Bowl and possibly the Pac-12 as we know them depend on it getting done right. The Big 12 is positioned decently to be one of the top six conferences for what now looks more like an auto-bid in most years due to post-realignment members added.

He made decently tasting though still tart lemonade with the lemons he was given. Holding Texas's and OU's feet to the fire is his way to get maximum attention to the new Big 12 until they're gone. He likely will also try to force ESPN into not marketing OU and Texas as SEC teams until the grant of media rights is over since that very much is a licensed use of IP.

Imagine the only marketing on the move done on the network is by the schools themselves…and what if the Big 12 retains approval of the "free" promotional video each gets per game, too…

twk said:

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Bowlsby is an idiot. Anyone can understand why the sips and sooners decided to leave the Big XII. But, what I don't understand, is how certain SEC schools were so easily persuaded that this was a good deal for them. The reason I say this is because it sets the wheels in motion for continued consolidation of big time college sports, and in that environment, where you may have only 40 teams competing in some kind of NCAA replacement, there's no guarantee that there's a seat at the table for all current SEC members.

Once the Big XII is no longer a "Power 5" league, we'll have gone from 65 big time programs (Power 5 + Notre Dame) to 57 (the remaining 8 Big XII teams falling down to the G5 tier). The culling of the herd likely won't stop at 57.

That's bad for the sport, because teams sports are not like other businesses. In a normal business, you want to grab market share, which inevitably results in some of your competitors going out of business. In sports, competition IS the business, and having fewer competitors is not a plus. Fans of the teams that get kicked to the curb will not necessarily transfer their allegiance to programs that make the cut. The result is that the pie will get smaller.

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Beyond the business aspects of college football (there are many), the traditions of college football are worth preserving. College football teams going "out of business" means that traditions die. I love giving Texas A&M my money, even when they're a "bad business" and go 8-5, because the traditions of Texas A&M are incredible. You can't put a price tag on Kyle being packed, or a Penn State whiteout game, or the craziness of the Iron Bowl, records and CFP chances of all the teams involved be damned.

I also love your point about the OU/tu move to the SEC being bad for the smaller SEC teams. If we get into CFB mega-conferences for the great teams, there's no real reason to have Miss State, Vandy, South Carolina, or Mizzou in it.

twk said:

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Bowlsby is an idiot. Anyone can understand why the sips and sooners decided to leave the Big XII. But, what I don't understand, is how certain SEC schools were so easily persuaded that this was a good deal for them. The reason I say this is because it sets the wheels in motion for continued consolidation of big time college sports, and in that environment, where you may have only 40 teams competing in some kind of NCAA replacement, there's no guarantee that there's a seat at the table for all current SEC members.

Once the Big XII is no longer a "Power 5" league, we'll have gone from 65 big time programs (Power 5 + Notre Dame) to 57 (the remaining 8 Big XII teams falling down to the G5 tier). The culling of the herd likely won't stop at 57.

That's bad for the sport, because teams sports are not like other businesses. In a normal business, you want to grab market share, which inevitably results in some of your competitors going out of business. In sports, competition IS the business, and having fewer competitors is not a plus. Fans of the teams that get kicked to the curb will not necessarily transfer their allegiance to programs that make the cut. The result is that the pie will get smaller.

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I don't see the Big12 losing power conference status. If the PAC and ACC are power conferences, there is no reason why the new Big12 won't be either.

Bowlsby is not an idiot, he is just trying to save face after being back-stabbed by cow and OU, and also doing his job as commish of the Big 12. They have done a decent job back-filling with the expansion. The best thing is that they are 100% committed to making cow and Zero U stay in the Big 12 through June 2025. They still get to collect the ~ $70 mill. exit fee for each and keep them for 3 more football seasons, win-win for the Big 12, lose-lose for cow, not as much for OU but still a negative.

Now, everything in life is negotiable, my guess is cow and OU will be in the SEC in 2024, as at some point the Big 12 will be ready to accept a negotiated buyout #, but I don't think it will be any earlier than that, otherwise the buyout # will be so big that cow and OU couldn't afford it.

My main impression is that tu and OU are making "100 year decisions" while Bowlsby can't seem to think about things past the end of his nose.

twk said:

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Bowlsby is an idiot. Anyone can understand why the sips and sooners decided to leave the Big XII. But, what I don't understand, is how certain SEC schools were so easily persuaded that this was a good deal for them. The reason I say this is because it sets the wheels in motion for continued consolidation of big time college sports, and in that environment, where you may have only 40 teams competing in some kind of NCAA replacement, there's no guarantee that there's a seat at the table for all current SEC members.

Once the Big XII is no longer a "Power 5" league, we'll have gone from 65 big time programs (Power 5 + Notre Dame) to 57 (the remaining 8 Big XII teams falling down to the G5 tier). The culling of the herd likely won't stop at 57.

That's bad for the sport, because teams sports are not like other businesses. In a normal business, you want to grab market share, which inevitably results in some of your competitors going out of business. In sports, competition IS the business, and having fewer competitors is not a plus. Fans of the teams that get kicked to the curb will not necessarily transfer their allegiance to programs that make the cut. The result is that the pie will get smaller.

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This. Some of the schools not named Alabama should have taken a much more serious and long term look at the future of college football and their place in the SEC before inviting in a school that has repeatedly pushed out less successful programs and blown up conferences wherever they've been.

If Vandy, Kentucky, Arky, MSU, Ole Miss, Mizzou, etc think they're irreplaceable or their tenure will save them, they're wrong. Slive wanted everything unanimous, knowing that stability and unity over the long haul were more important the fleeting interests of individual schools or blocs, but Sankey is no Slive and Sankey's eventual replacement might not be either. All it takes is a money chaser or someone who is deferential to the sips heading up the conference to blow up the whole equitable sharing idea and start causing rifts between schools and a schism within the conference. If Sankey was willing to **** us over and stab us in the back for increased payouts, why do they think he or someone else wouldn't do the same to them?

At some point, consolidation will push some schools out of college football to create more marquee matchup to drive ratings and revenues. No one will want to see powerhouses feasting on cupcakes (looking at you Vandy and Kentucky), and the cupcakes will be told to gtfo or take a smaller cut.

Traveler said:

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My main impression is that tu and OU are making "100 year decisions" while Bowlsby can't seem to think about things past the end of his nose.

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He has to stabilize the conference to do anything else. He needs the current grant of rights to be meaningful to do a new one and stabilize.

He wasn't a great hire. He was sponsored by OU initially probably to balance Texas's sway on the conference office. But when the media partners stepped back from their commitments to keep the Big 12 alive it freed Texas to make other plans. So they did.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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twk said:

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Bowlsby is an idiot. Anyone can understand why the sips and sooners decided to leave the Big XII. But, what I don't understand, is how certain SEC schools were so easily persuaded that this was a good deal for them. The reason I say this is because it sets the wheels in motion for continued consolidation of big time college sports, and in that environment, where you may have only 40 teams competing in some kind of NCAA replacement, there's no guarantee that there's a seat at the table for all current SEC members.

Once the Big XII is no longer a "Power 5" league, we'll have gone from 65 big time programs (Power 5 + Notre Dame) to 57 (the remaining 8 Big XII teams falling down to the G5 tier). The culling of the herd likely won't stop at 57.

That's bad for the sport, because teams sports are not like other businesses. In a normal business, you want to grab market share, which inevitably results in some of your competitors going out of business. In sports, competition IS the business, and having fewer competitors is not a plus. Fans of the teams that get kicked to the curb will not necessarily transfer their allegiance to programs that make the cut. The result is that the pie will get smaller.

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This. Some of the schools not named Alabama should have taken a much more serious and long term look at the future of college football and their place in the SEC before inviting in a school that has repeatedly pushed out less successful programs and blown up conferences wherever they've been.

If Vandy, Kentucky, Arky, MSU, Ole Miss, Mizzou, etc think they're irreplaceable or their tenure will save them, they're wrong. Slive wanted everything unanimous, knowing that stability and unity over the long haul were more important the fleeting interests of individual schools or blocs, but Sankey is no Slive and Sankey's eventual replacement might not be either. All it takes is a money chaser or someone who is deferential to the sips heading up the conference to blow up the whole equitable sharing idea and start causing rifts between schools and a schism within the conference. If Sankey was willing to **** us over and stab us in the back for increased payouts, why do they think he or someone else wouldn't do the same to them?

At some point, consolidation will push some schools out of college football to create more marquee matchup to drive ratings and revenues. No one will want to see powerhouses feasting on cupcakes (looking at you Vandy and Kentucky), and the cupcakes will be told to gtfo or take a smaller cut.

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I agree with you wholeheartedly that consolidation will drive out the small schools, and Kentucky, Vandy et al are dupes for going through with letting in OU/tu. I just want to explore the hypothetical... what would these super conferences look like? I've heard suggestions to remake college football like British soccer, where you have several leagues of competition, the two worst teams in a given league go down a step and the two best teams go up a step, and each step plays for a championship. Only question is, do we even have 14 teams that are reasonably competitive with each other? Here's my best shot (and it's very debatable):

From the SEC: UGA, Bama, LSU, A&M
From the B10: OSU, Michigan, Iowa, Penn State
From the B12: OU, ISU
From the P12: USC, Oregon
From the ACC: Clemson, Notre Dame

Thing is, even in this case, there will be 6 teams that regularly hang with each other, and 8 that are obviously a step slower. I don't even think there are super clear tiers beyond the second tier either. It'd take some serious work to get to the grand design of a superconference that actually can offer weekly big-time games that are still competitive. I can't say with confidence that either USC or Oregon can hang with Ole Miss. I'd say that the only two non-SEC teams here that can play Bama respectably are Clemson and OSU.

I also hope for tradition's sake that something like this never happens. It'd hard to get excited about A&M vs Iowa State. I'd rather watch us play Arky or our heated longtime rival, South Carolina.

It's all about $$, that is the beginning and end of it. Nobody other than A&M stopped to think otherwise. Personally IMHO very short sighted of the SEC West teams in particular to be on board with this. I would have thought A&M, LSU, Pig, Bama, and Mizzou in particular would have all been a NO vote based on self-serving interests of recruiting, market share, visibility, etc,

The case for A&M being against it is obvious. For the same reasons LSU and Pig should have been against it as well as it will negatively impact their recruiting, LSU less so, but it could be very damaging for Pig.

Bama cherry picks in Texas, they have several elite players from TX, so now if they find a kid who isn't interested in A&M or LSU but wants to play SEC football it was easy for Bama to swoop in, they now also have to fend off cow and OU.

Mizzou should have been against it as well, not just from the recruiting aspect but having a history with the cows, they were probably OK with OU, but did they not learn anything from dealing with the cows?

Very disappointed in the SEC overall but those teams in particular. It's not just that they stabbed A&M in the back, that is the worst part of it from our point of view, but they didn't even care to look at or think about long term repercussions, they just saw the potential $$ and grabbed it.

Cow and OU going to the ACC, B1G, or PAC wasn't going to change the CFB power structure or economics at all. The SEC was, is, and still would be the premiere conference in CFB and paid handsomely for it. The new ESPN contract to replace CBS (what is it, 4x or 5x the $$), that was done based on the existing SEC and the SECN is a grand slam homerun. The expansion of adding cow and OU was not needed.

Just hope and pray the SEC does West-East divisions and not pods and we still have a decent schedule with as many traditional SEC teams as possible.

twk said:

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TexAg15 said:

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OU and sips were going to go somewhere eventually. It's in our best interest that it is in our conference.

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OU and Texas posed no threat to the SEC. No other move would have been nearly as beneficial to OU and Texas as going to the SEC. OU and Texas in the Big Ten, ACC, or Pac-12 wouldn't have been a problem for the SEC, and none of those was likely to happen. OU and Texas bluffed Sankey into making a defensive move which screwed up the playoff expansion. If Sankey had held his nerve, OU and Texas would have been stuck in the Big XII well into the next decade, and the playoff expansion plan would have been approved.

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I believe that if Sankey had denied sip and OU they would've sought the Big 10 next who likely would've taken them. That may have put Big 10 TV money so high we wouldn't catch them for the foreseeable future. Therefore, them joining the SEC my indeed be their best move for us.

The Agly Duckling said:

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twk said:

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TexAg15 said:

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OU and sips were going to go somewhere eventually. It's in our best interest that it is in our conference.

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OU and Texas posed no threat to the SEC. No other move would have been nearly as beneficial to OU and Texas as going to the SEC. OU and Texas in the Big Ten, ACC, or Pac-12 wouldn't have been a problem for the SEC, and none of those was likely to happen. OU and Texas bluffed Sankey into making a defensive move which screwed up the playoff expansion. If Sankey had held his nerve, OU and Texas would have been stuck in the Big XII well into the next decade, and the playoff expansion plan would have been approved.

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I believe that if Sankey had denied sip and OU they would've sought the Big 10 next who likely would've taken them. That may have put Big 10 TV money so high we wouldn't catch them for the foreseeable future. Therefore, them joining the SEC my indeed be their best move for us.

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That's what Sankey was thinking, but the Big 10 would have had to cross several of its red lines for new members in order to take OU and Texas (most notably that they are not contiguous to Big 10 states, and that OU is not an AAU member). If the SEC had turned down OU and Texas, the Big 10 probably wouldn't have been very eager to be seen as taking SEC rejects, and that, coupled with the aforementioned shortcomings, probably would have gotten the Big 10 to pass, too.

I think this is about Sankey's legacy and ego. He does not get the respect that Roy Kramer and Mike Slive got. He probably hoped this would change that.

The Agly Duckling said:

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twk said:

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TexAg15 said:

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OU and sips were going to go somewhere eventually. It's in our best interest that it is in our conference.

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OU and Texas posed no threat to the SEC. No other move would have been nearly as beneficial to OU and Texas as going to the SEC. OU and Texas in the Big Ten, ACC, or Pac-12 wouldn't have been a problem for the SEC, and none of those was likely to happen. OU and Texas bluffed Sankey into making a defensive move which screwed up the playoff expansion. If Sankey had held his nerve, OU and Texas would have been stuck in the Big XII well into the next decade, and the playoff expansion plan would have been approved.

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I believe that if Sankey had denied sip and OU they would've sought the Big 10 next who likely would've taken them. That may have put Big 10 TV money so high we wouldn't catch them for the foreseeable future. Therefore, them joining the SEC my indeed be their best move for us.

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The new ESPN contract when the CBS deal expires will put a substantial # of SEC teams into the top 10 in revenues and be a huge increase to even the likes of State, Kentucky, Mizzou, USC, etc.

The B1G will then be well behind the SEC in terms of TV $$. Also I think the SEC would have more negotiating power as there are more premiere teams in the SEC. The B1G is a great conference but top-heavy. At the top the B1G is comparable to the SEC, but it's when you get into the middle of the pack teams the SEC is far superior to the Big Ten.

There is no denying adding cow and OU is good for the SEC in terms of $$, however.

twk said:

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Bowlsby is an idiot. Anyone can understand why the sips and sooners decided to leave the Big XII. But, what I don't understand, is how certain SEC schools were so easily persuaded that this was a good deal for them. The reason I say this is because it sets the wheels in motion for continued consolidation of big time college sports, and in that environment, where you may have only 40 teams competing in some kind of NCAA replacement, there's no guarantee that there's a seat at the table for all current SEC members.

Once the Big XII is no longer a "Power 5" league, we'll have gone from 65 big time programs (Power 5 + Notre Dame) to 57 (the remaining 8 Big XII teams falling down to the G5 tier). The culling of the herd likely won't stop at 57.

That's bad for the sport, because teams sports are not like other businesses. In a normal business, you want to grab market share, which inevitably results in some of your competitors going out of business. In sports, competition IS the business, and having fewer competitors is not a plus. Fans of the teams that get kicked to the curb will not necessarily transfer their allegiance to programs that make the cut. The result is that the pie will get smaller.

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Great take. Excellent points made. The sec went for more money in the short term. But long term health of the sport may suffer along w a few sec bottom feeders

I've had my doubts on how this benefits anybody from the beginning. Clearly, it hurts the B12, so that doesn't need to be rehashed.

I understand the OUT exit move if the Big 12 was going to fall apart, but OU and T now move from the big fish in a small pond to a big fish in a river.

Is OU going to be more relevant going from 10 and 11 win seasons to 8 or 9 win seasons?

How much more money does Texas get going from 10% of B12 pot to 6.25% of SEC share (more, but how much more)? I know that the next media rights deal is going to be a lot more money because all media rights deals are increasing in value, but is it worth it for adding more problems?


And what's the incentive for rank and file SEC teams to add two more hurdles to win a championship, especially if means a 9th or 10th conference game or seeing each team less.

I have felt like the SEC it will still mean more, but it may need to be "SEC, it means more, but not as much as it used to mean"

OKC~Ag said:

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Bowlsby knows why ou and texas is leaving for sec...He can't be that dense.

Bowlsby know it is not about money, as ou and texas has plenty. Difference between future SEC money and big 12 will be significant but not for texas and ou as they both have plenty of other streams of money.

Real reason is relevancy and exposure.

ou and texas wilts playing iowa state and k state in the middle of corn field. They crave attention and dolts in SEC HQ are willing participant in diluting current members' media access at cost of meager future $$$.

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Careful. I think you might be underestimating the sip's lust for money. OU will do whatever they need to so that they can stay with sip, but the whorns are all about getting the $$$