Reactions To ESPN's Bevo TV: I

Damn - if this deal is going to damage our pristine reputation with our loving conference mates, maybe Deloss should reconsider.

It has been clear for a while now that Texas is anticipating the death of the Big 12 and conference realignment. Moves have been made to put Texas in the strongest possible position to dictate terms including strengthening the non-conference football schedule and now this TV deal with ESPN. As Pendergast points out, this also includes positioning itself so that becoming an independent is a realistic option.

As with any attempt to be forward thinking and plan for anticipated events, there is risk involved. I would much rather Texas take that forward thinking approach.

A few points.

1. You are assuming TAMU has the option of leaving the conference on their own. I am not sure about that. They almost did last summer, but that caught everybody by surprise. Next time won’t. The legislature has more control of the schools than ever before in this time of strained budgets and reduced funding. The BU and TT faction knows that their schools can’t go it alone, and have limited power to force Texas to carry them if TAMU goes alone.

2. You are assuming Texas doesn’t have the option of dropping the network. It always does. It is the greatest marketing tool, or the largest poker chip to trade in a new realignment.

TTR,

We have talked about this at length. You know who I have spoken to. A&M has a standing offer to join the SEC. UT-Austin reached over and gave A&M a shove to the east the day they signed this deal.

If ESPN doesn’t want A&M to go to the SEC, it won’t happen.

TAMU may have an offer. Before the BOR votes to accept it (and we will know what Perry thinks by who he appoints), the legislature will let the Ags know what they think about the move. How much state funding is TAMU ready to surrender?

You live and think in a vacuum, Ag_in_tex.

Again, this is silly. Per Nebraska (the team that bailed on the Big 12 and was willing to leave its old Big 8 partners to non-BCS status), Texas is selfish and doesn’t care about its conferencemates.

Per some Ags, Texas is trying to selfishly destroy its in-state competition. Their proposed response is to bail for the SEC, destroy what’s left of the Big 12, and never play any of those Texas schools again unless it’s from a position of strength.

Did anybody see “The Road to Perdition”? The scene where Paul Newman (the mob boss) states his case to Tom Hanks (the betrayed hitman)? “Nobody in this room will get to see heaven.”

Taylor Troom for the win.

On a side note that series of books from the Road to Perdition are a great vacation read. Road to Purgatory was almost it’s equal.

TTR - surely you wouldn’t argue that UT is unselfish and does care about its conferencemates? No thinking observer blames UT for being selfish and protective of only its own interests, and I didn’t think UT fans argued otherwise.

I’m just surprised UT signed on to a 20 year deal. The better move would seem to be a 3 year deal to prove the network’s worth, then shop it around. Is there an “out” that hasn’t been widely reported?

Don’t toss Texas into the briar patch of dissolving the big 12 - no, anything but that. And even worse, country cousin, which derives their identity therefrom, leaving and going over to SEC, most likely becoming a whipping boy? Perish the thought.

As long as we have a contingency plan for the fedex packages flying out of College Station once the Ags join the SEC, I’m cool with them taking their act elsewhere.

Farmer Ted, I made it clear that Texas is no saint, and is looking out for its interests. That said, what is a better partner- someone who is innately good? Or someone who actually does good things?

KU, KSU, Mizzou, ISU, TT and BU are BCS schools for only one reason- because the University of Texas is their conference-mate. If NU were their conference mate, and not UT, they would be out in the cold.

TTR, those schools were BCS-caliber schools before UT showed up, and if UT had bolted the Big 12 instead of NU, they would still be BCS schools today. It would be a temporary and untenable situation without UT, to be sure, but isn’t it a temporary and untenable situation without NU, now?

I don’t think there’s a lot to argue about here. Bob’s article above isn’t a manifestation of anti-UT feelings from Nebraska. The anti-UT passion, to the extent it existed (and it was always overblown), is dissipating rapidly as our interest in the Big 12 begins to subside. I suspect there is a similar growing disinterest about NU by Texas folks, too. We’ll always be curious about Texas, but they aren’t as important to us as they were in the Big 12 days.

I still think that the Longhorn Network will be used as a building block for a conference network, after a further conference realignment or in a couple years if realignment talk blows over. So it will end up putting extra $ millions in our conference mates’ coffers. Of course, it will continue to put a lot more money in our coffers, but someone had to be the frontrunner. My guess is, if our deal right now is worth $300 mil, a Big 12-2 deal right now would be worth $400 mil. Now we know where $300 mil of the value comes from.

Doing it this way ensured that we dont have to revenue share a conference network equally. This is where a bunch of people start calling us selfish. Then this is where I respond that we’re against communism and if they want handouts, head to your local welfare office. The concept of earning what you get has worked for this country. America! Fuck Yea!

TTR, those schools were BCS-caliber schools before UT showed up, and if UT had bolted the Big 12 instead of NU, they would still be BCS schools today.

The landscape has changed a lot from the 90’s, and the simple moniker of being a “BCS caliber” doesn’t really mean much, if anything; (Temple is one), not to mention that it’s a bit circular as you’re applying it.

  The more accurate distinction is either that you’re an attractive brand in revenue generating sports to the point where you’re self-sustaining, and even sustain for others, especially in the winner-take-all revenue pit of FBS, or you’re not. Guess what most of the remnants of the Big 12 qualify as?

“Farmer Ted said: January 21st, 2011 at 9:19 am
TTR, those schools were BCS-caliber schools before UT showed up, and if UT had bolted the Big 12 instead of NU, they would still be BCS schools today.”

You know, if Pol Pot had not killed those millions of people in his death camps, he would have been another land reformer. If, buts and intentions aside, only one of UT and NU has been a good partner in the Big 12.

By this line of reasoning, we’d better not win the next six national championships. Everyone would hate and envy us and work harder to defeat us.

PS The Ukraine is a sitting duck. A road apple, Newman. The Ukraine is weak. It’s feeble. I think it’s time to put the hurt on the Ukraine.

TTR — I don’t even know where to start with that last comment, so I won’t. I think our versions of the events of last summer are vastly different.

Again, it’s perfectly OK for a university to be “selfish.” NU was selfish when it had to be, as was UT — UT’s act of self-interest just happened to have the byproduct of keeping the Big 12 intact. But I don’t think anyone would dispute that UT stayed in the B12 because it was best option for UT at the time, not as an act of philanthropy for the other 9 remaining members.
To claim that UT somehow saved the conference or was a “good partner” is disingenuous at best.

UT wasn’t looking out for anyone but itself, just as NU (and every other school with power and choices) was.

I thought Aggies wanted to get back to having a bonfire.

Now when fans display the Horns down, they’ll mean it.

I love all this faux concern about how this could lead to us no longer being beloved…

Our already strong position has been massively reinforced. No matter what the near future holds as regards conference realignments, we’ll have the whip hand. We might or might not use that position wisely, but it’s better to be us than pretty much anyone else.

As to the Aggies and their “standing offer” to join the SEC, let’s just pretend for Ag_in_TX’s sake that their calls would be returned. And let’s also pretend that the SEC has another school ready to add to keep their numbers even. And let’s also pretend that aTm and this other team would increase their per-school net. And let’s pretend that the state legislature would allow the Aggies to cut their ties to their bigger, better brother. So they pull the trigger, and the Aggies start contending for championships. Hang on a minute, I’m dizzy with suppositions here….

OK, better now… in this brave new Aggie world, where would we be?

well, frankly, still sitting pretty. We’d be removed from the Aggies. They’d have to come up with a whole new identity and have to manufacture a new “rivalry”. Our primary rivalry would remain unchanged. The SEC would surely try to make new inroads into Texas recruiting, but how much actual difference would it make? Hard to tell, but we can only offer a limited number of scholarships anyway, and I think we’d still get the cream of the crop - with our new staff and the advantages the Longhorn Network would bring, it’s hard to imagine a cataclysmic drop-off in our recruiting. And it’s not like the SEC doesn’t recruit Texas right now; it’s just a question of how much they gain from playing six games or so in College Station. In the end, I think any football/recruiting gains for the SEC would most likely come at the expense of… well, the Aggies.

The main thing the Aggies bolting would bring us is - freedom. We could honestly say we weren’t the ones to break up the Big12, and I think at that point a lot of the pressure TT or BU fans/legislators could bring would be dissipated. Leaving us free to go elsewhere without baggage if that seems desirable to us.

I was never a fan of the PAC 16 as supposedly constituted in the last go-round. It was nice to dream about big games in LA, Seattle and Palo Alto (Pullman, not so much…), and the academic ties that would bind us, but I thought (and still think) that it would have devolved into an “equal, but separate” relationship with the actual Pacific Coast schools. There’d be way more trips to Lubbock and Stillwater than to LA and Seattle. And we could talk about academic partnerships with Stanford and Berkeley, but with Tech and Okie State along for the ride… well, a rising tide might lift all boats, but that’d have to be one hell of a tide. If the Aggies provide us enough political cover though, an unencumbered move might be a lot more attractive…

Ultimately, nobody knows what the near future is going to hold. We might see a whole new round of conference realignment, with a move towards superconferences, we might see absolutely no changes at the top, just adjustments in the lower tiers. In pretty much every scenario, this new network and the dollars it brings do nothing but make us stronger. Could it make us more hated? Bah, let’s face it, the Nebraskas of the world could not possibly hate us any more. And that hasn’t hurt us all that much. The thing they forgot as they developed their LDS (Longhorn Derangement Syndrome) is that it only hurts when you care. So it hurt back when we respected them. Somewhere in the middle of a Bo Pelini rant, I just quit caring what they thought, and I suspect a whole lot of us did.

Farmer Ted, the Pol Pot comment was in response to your grudging admission that maybe NU is as venal as UT (although said in a way to indicate you don’t really believe that). I get that from a lot of Cornhuskers. They like to envision their school, and Tom Osborne, as champions of the underdogs, unwilling to back down against the Longhorn monster. You keep coming back to intentions. I have some wisdom for you- Intentions don’t matter as much as actions. The fact remains that NU bailed on the conference, even after Powers said UT would commit to staying if NU would too. The fact remains that Texas remained in the Big 12 and held it together.

Those are the facts. You don’t have to read anything into it about intentions or character. You don’t need to. You have facts.

TTR,

You’re wrong about Powers — he didn’t say that. He wouldn’t commit. As long as we’re talking about facts, that’s the one that precipitated the end — it’s what made Osborne and Perlman make that frantic call to Delany and beg for the offer.

NU fans didn’t celebrate joining the Big 10. It was simply the best choice for NU, just like staying in the Big 12 was bst for UT.

facts have not been nu’s friend for a good while now.

beebe to delany: look at the sign, jim. ‘all sales final’

“You’re wrong about Powers — he didn’t say that. He wouldn’t commit.”

http://www.omaha.com/article/20100830/BIGRED/708309872

“The next day, Friday, June 4, the call for commitment turned to how to define it. As part of that, Perlman attempted to probe the depth of Texas’ commitment to the Big 12.

What if Nebraska stayed but both Colorado and Missouri left? Would Texas stay then, Perlman asked? Perlman said Powers indicated he was optimistic Texas would, but he could not commit."

It doesn’t say he WOULD NOT commit. It says he COULD NOT commit. That’s because a BOR vote is required. I think it’s pretty clear from the article that Texas was trying to work with Nebraska to hold the conference together. Know why Powers was optimistic? Because he knew Texas wanted to hold the Big 12 together. He had reason for optimism. CU and NU did in fact leave, and the conference is still here, with Texas in it.

The article, from a Omaha newspaper, shows two institutions. One, UT, is very open in its dealings. It wants to keep the Big 12, and it wants to keep its media rights ownership. The other, NU, was working for a year to find a new, better conference to join.

Jeez TTR, would not/could not. Whatever. I read “could not” quite differently.

Dodds didn’t commit, NU got nervous, made the call, begged for an offer, luckily got one and bolted. That was my point.

You’re wrong on many of your facts, so it’s hard to argue this. NU and UT were both chatting with other conferences — beginning in the spring, not a year prior.

nice crawdad. state department?

Pendergast is a Golden Domer. Him having problems with this is laughable.

Farmer Ted, TTR - let’s put this aside, shall we? Both schools did what they did so they could get pa-pa-paid. Both schools got pa-pa-paid. The details really don’t matter.

Arguing over who got out first is kinda like arguing over who fired the first shot at Fort Sumter. Things happened the way they did because of dynamics much larger than this or that specific turn of negotiations. Namely, both schools were getting shortchanged and neither school would continue to settle for the status quo. That’s the driver of everything. The fact that things panned out the way they did and not in some other way is simply an accident of history.

To dork it up: not all Nash equilibria are optimal, but they are nonetheless improvements for all parties. And sometimes that’s the best option available. You figure out whether that’s true through negotiations, and oh boy did we have negotiations. So at least in terms of athletic department revenue, we’ve both likely maximized our position, given all the constraints.

So Ted - quit being a grumpy-gus. Your athletic program just doubled its revenue and joined a historic conference, and no one got banished to the MWC as a consequence.

And TTR - Pol Pot? Really? That’s a bit over-the-toppish. Besides I’ve always pictured Pelini as more of a Vlad the Impaler type.

so I guess if we completely disregard everything the Huskers said, and everything they did, and agree to accept without any evidence at all that their intentions were good, they really were the good guys…

as to: “…those schools were BCS-caliber schools before UT showed up, and if UT had bolted the Big 12 instead of NU, they would still be BCS schools today.”
They’re “BCS teams” because they’re in a “BCS conference”, but that conference is “BCS-caliber” because of teams like UT and OU. If UT bolted, OU and aTm would also likely be gone. Who would KU, KSU, Mizzou, ISU, TT and BU add that would keep the conference at “BCS-caliber” level? Or do you seriously think that since “those schools were BCS-caliber schools before UT showed up” they’d still be considered as such in the absence of any truly upper-echelon teams?

damn, it’s quiet in this room. did the husker bologna machine run out of juice?

if we said ONE SECOND would you come back? i don’t think we are through playing.