Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Consultants' Fuzzy Math

So after a press conference today where Texas announced a commitment to the Big 12 and not much else, it was evident that there was no TV deal at all, and the Big 12 and Don Beebe apparently used the consultants from Office Space to come up with a Fox Sports Net deal that will pay the members of the conference $130-140 million per year...for 18 years.

Yep, $2.34 billion to show a conference that lost two teams.  Baylor and Missouri in prime-time, baby!

Did Don Beebe offer strippers and coke at Big 12 Media Days, too?

Monday, June 14, 2010

Welcome Back to the Southwest Conference

Good news to those of you Texas fans too young to remember the Southwest Conference.  

 It is coming back.

With Texas’s announcement that they are staying in the Big 12, er, Big 10, er, SWC2.0, they’re essentially trading good football for more money in the bank.

Not a bad deal…if you are an accounting major.

Nebraska and Colorado, the only Big 12 North schools to have won a national championship, saw that the conference was a lame duck and were smart enough to get out last week while they still could. They were so eager to get out of Dodge that they’ll pay the conference $10 million each to get out of here early.  The rest?  They let an incompetent league commissioner promise them more money in a TV deal that will no doubt be as bad as the current one as far as coverage of the actual sports that we all love.

Where the hell was the commish with this TV deal while Nebraska and Colorado were still in the league?  In the drive-thru at Burger King?

The fans?  As Dave Lapham would say, they get “face-raped”.

No, Texas fans, you don’t get to see USC, UCLA, Oregon, Arizona State and Cal coming to Austin.  But hey, you get to travel to Ames, IA and Waco every other year.

Whoopee.

And yes, you’ll get your Longhorn Sports Network, which will show said re-runs of Texas and Iowa State.  I can barely hold my excitement.

And yes, the best team you’ll ever see play at DKR with this current alignment is Texas Tech, Oklahoma State or perhaps Texas A&M.  No more Nebraska on the rise, or a possible resurgent Colorado program, or any of the Pac-10 schools.  If they didn’t want the competition of the Pac-10 or Big 10, there will be no Ohio States or Michigans coming to the Forty Acres anytime soon.  Tech and Oklahoma State.  Where Cotton Bowl victories are a reason to party.

No conference basketball games at Pauley Pavilion, or epic baseball road trips to Tempe or Palo Alto.  No conference championship games in Phoenix or Denver.  But hey, Manhattan, KS in April is lovely, I hear. 

Congratulations, Texas.  You are the laughing stock of the country today.

Does anyone in Bellmont really think that this conference is any better than the ACC or Big East?  Or the Mountain West for that matter?  Texas is Texas, but Oklahoma is coming off a Sun Bowl victory with a damned good chance of having another down year.  Tech and Oklahoma State are on the way down after a couple of good years.  Missouri and Kansas were flashes in the pan in the North.  Texas A&M is a long way from being a competitive program.
Iowa State, Baylor and Kansas State are barely worth mentioning.

Auburn went undefeated in the SEC a few years ago and didn’t play for the national championship.  What happens if Texas wins all of its games…and the best victory is over an 8-4 Oklahoma team?  We’re playing in the Fiesta Bowl while one loss Alabama jumps us, that’s what.

But hey, you enjoy watching that on the Longhorn Sports Network, Deloss.

The other schools share the blame here, too.  Oklahoma and Texas A&M basically let Texas dictate their program and who they are.  A&M let the SEC play them like a fiddle, while Oklahoma followed big brother Texas wherever they went and would have broken their nose if they had stopped in their tracks.

The new conference TV deal is set incrementally, so you have Texas the big dog, Oklahoma and Texas A&M the medium size dogs and the other dogs get screwed like a poodle in heat out of the big money.  Sounds like a healthy relationship.  Once the euphoria of getting saved from the WAC wears off, Kansas State and Baylor will have their hands out wondering where their share is.

The worst thing about all of this?  You’re just delaying the inevitable.  The Big 12 conference will die.  It is just a matter of time.  College football is moving towards super conferences, and a conference with Dallas, Houston and that’s it stands no chance of surviving.  Its death will probably come in 2014 when the BCS contract is up.  So you’re basically attaching your name to a dying duck, a failing brand that other schools paid a mighty sum to get away from. 

Congrats.

But we do get to see the rise of the Southwest Conference 2.0 and the death of the Big 12 all from the comfort of our living room on the Longhorn Sports Network.

There is that.