It all comes down to this, people have spent the last few weeks making some big moves to try to make some big money on College Football. Texas was annoyed that it wasn’t earning as much as Big 10 or SEC schools from TV contracts, as were Texas A&M and Oklahoma, while Nebraska felt it didn’t have enough power in the Big 12.
All of this left Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe staring unemployment in the face as the Pac 10, Big Ten, and SEC moved in to carve up his conference. First Colorado bolted west, then Nebraska moved to the Big Ten on Friday.
That should have been the end of the Big 12 and Beebe’s job, but he lucked out. The Pac 10 and Texas couldn’t come to an agreement on letting the Longhorns create their own cable TV network. That gave Beebe a chance to offer a new deal to Texas where the whole of the conference would make big increases in TV money with Texas getting the lion’s share, as well as letting Texas set up its own network.
With Texas getting what it wanted the other members of a potentially super-sized Pac-16 conference all had to bow to its wishes and return to the fold, for now at least. Of course this has some people wondering why he didn’t deliver such a deal before losing Colorado and Nebraska.
This is far from over. The Pac 10 won’t be happy with an odd number of teams, they will want a 12th team. They could raid the Mountain West and nab Utah, meaning that conference could come out the loser from all of this despite adding Boise State. Alternatively the Pac 10 might decide that patience is a virtue and wait to plan another raid on the Big 12 in a year or two.
One thing this whole mess has taught us, there really is no off-season in College Football
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