TKthunder2

While true if you assume Texas has aggy as a rival basically you have up to 4 teams (OU, Ark, LSU, ?MSU?) that could possibly have 2 games in the state in a single year that occurs once every 4 years. If someone like Oklahoma or Arkansas have both UT and aggy as rivals they’d get 1 game a year in the state every year. Every “non rival” of UT/aggy gets 1 game in the state every other year which is basically what the SEC West and South Carolina had after aggy joined. The only teams that will get an increased Texas presence are those in the East. Also Oklahoma’s presence in the state, as a result of this move to the SEC will decrease. Currently they had 2-3 games a year in the state, now they be down to 1-2. Arkansas’s presence may also decrease if they don’t get both Texas and aggy as rivals. They’d go from playing aggy in Dallas every year to playing @Texas every other year and @aggy 1 out of every 4 years. Only LSU’s presence in the state will increase slightly assuming they are rivals with aggy but not Texas.

Northwest: WSU, Boise, OSU, Cal, Stanford, Fresno, Hawaii fb/Gonzaga nonfb Southwest: SDSU, UNLV, Colorado St, SMU, Rice, Tulane, Memphis

Just to be crystal fucking clear. The Big 12 (not Texas or Oklahoma) invited cougar high, magic underwear, and whoever else to join this conference EARLY. Any fucking pain in the ass bullshit they are going through is 100% their fucking fault, not Texas or Oklahoma. FOX didn’t want to let Texas/Oklahoma go, maybe you negotiate that shit BEFORE you invite more people to the fucking table. Go cry me a fucking river. Also Texas owns its third tier rights and can do what is pleases because they AGREED TO EQUAL REVENUE SHARING, you know that windfall of money from the checks you’ve been cashing for over a decade.

https://amp.kansas.com/sports/college/big-12/kansas-state/article272564423.html Pac-12 school president reads K-State message boards for conference realignment talk

The whole #metoo movement. ESPN has already started making a point to include women’s sports in more prominent places like sports center and their scrolling ticker including highlighting “Breaking News”. Converting the LHN to ESPNW would put it on a lower tier (where the LHN currently resides outside of Texas anyways) and would give ESPN something to hold up and show the world that they promote women’s sports just as much as men’s.

Put a few beers in the kid and he’d be a pretty good dancer.

The University has (or had I haven’t kept up in a few years) multiple studios around campus. We’re specifically talking about the LHN studio off I-35 between 32nd & 38th near St David’s. That’s rented space, not University owned so I don’t think UT would try to take that over…but I could be wrong.

The SEC.

Seriously fuck him. The Oklahoma basketball game was on ESPN+ last weekend for fuck’s sake because of this conference’s dumbass TV rights deal and they declined to allow the LHN to carry it. They can fuck all the way off.

UT’s 3rd tier rights will be folded into the SECN just like every other SEC team. There will not be a Longhorn branded network. As to what ESPN will do with the channel, we do not know. Rumors have ranged from it will be converted to another SEC Network like ESPN2 for the Western teams, that it’ll be converted to a Big 12 network to house all the Big 12 3rd tier content currently relegated to ESPN+, or that it’ll be converted to an ESPNW channel to highlight women’s sports. It could also just shut down but that seems wasteful, considering all the work effort ESPN spent to get it up and running and into multiple provider carriage agreements. Rumors also have ESPN keeping/maintaining the LHN studio in Austin simply because there is a ton of creative talent in this town that ESPN can still take advantage of. That being said, with the ever increasing cost of living in Austin, I wouldn’t be shocked if they shut it down.

Wood…have

4- UF/FSU, UGA/GT, SC/Clem, UK/UL 6- Bama/Aub, OleMiss/MSU, TN/Vandy Remaining 6 -Arkansas, LSU, Mizzou, Texas, Oklahoma, aggy Obvious solution: UT/aggy, LSU/Arkansas, OU/Mizzou but this only works if LSU and Arkansas are rivals (the other matchups will be). If they aren’t rivals then UT/aggy, LSU/OU, Arkansas/Mizzou could work too but again requires LSU/OU to be paired up which seems unlikely. Final option would be LSU/aggy, Texas/Arkansas, OU/Mizzou but would keep Texas/aggy off Thanksgiving weekend which seems poorly planned from a marketing perspective.

Damn RIP Red.

Agree completely about hobby identity people (this includes over top top sports fan guy too) but the street racing fucks that shut down roads takes that “hobby” to super douche level.

I think I would probably just sleep in a little later than try to change the pace I’ve set for decades.

I’m about to pass out drunk just thinking about it.

Just to be fair the SEC plays this game too. They expanded to 14 but refused to go to 9 conference games while the B1G did go to 9 conference games. SEC plays only 8 conference games means less losses which means the average SEC teams looks more impressive (thanks to their 4th easy OOC cupcake win) while the B1G/B12/P12 all played 9 conference games which simply makes their records worse (yep the math checks out). Then you add in cupcake weekend in November where the SEC artificially rises in the polls while the other conferences are dropping since they are playing conference games. This artificially inflates the rankings ahead of their rivalry weekend games, making them appear more important than they really are and giving the top schools more of a rankings boost when they win and the losers more grace so they don’t drop too far. This also attracts more media and fan interest as well. More media/fan interest leads to better recruiting and ultimately to high NFL draft picks which makes their recruits get rankings boost simply because they are committing to an SEC school (Texas got this same love during the later year under Mack Brown). This entire system then leads to higher than average preseason polls which helps inflate early season victories and soften any early season losses as the media continually bought into the SEC hype. To clarify I’m not saying the SEC is a bad conference my any measure, the top is/has been great but it’s just that their also ran programs get way too much benefit of the doubt because of that SEC patch on their jerseys. Bowl season typically proves this out every year (even with the SEC manipulating their bowl seeding) but collective ignores this and allows the ‘didn’t want to be their’ excuse. Anyway, my point was that everyone is guilty to some degree. The fact that the PAC12 and B12 unnecessarily played 9 conference games (so the rest of the conference could play UT/OU, or USC/UCLA more) and intentionally lower their rankings makes them dumb and the SEC/ACC smarter, and the B1G smarter before them. If you’re not taking advantage of the rules to make your conference more successful then you’re a dipshit, a term that can accurately describe the leadership of the P12/B12 over the last decade+.

I remember when it was just hippies and drunk college kids sitting on the curb smoking weed. And people complained about that too.

If they maintain the status quo of the 12 team CFP and NCAA bball tournament then yes I think their is a significant diminishing return. But once you go past 16 to 20-24 the conversation around that will change significantly and you’ll see a push to breakaway from the NCAA and for a SEC only playoff and a Big Ten only playoff in all major sports (where each conference will control the full broadcast right of its playoff games) culminating in a College Super Bowl or sorts (which will be the only joint SEC/B1G media agreement that they can sell separately). If you add Florida State, Clemson and Miami to the B1G/SEC you have every FBS champ in the last 30 years. Add ND, Washington, Oregon, and UNC and you have the top 30 most valuable programs as well as 68 of the last 75 titles. We’ve been down this road before with the FBS/FCS split and the D1/D2 split before that. It’s not that an FCS or D2 team can’t beat a FBS/D1 team it’s just that it no longer benefits the bigger schools to pretend to be on the same level as the smaller schools. Baylor, Gonzaga, Villanova can still have a basketball tournament and sell their rights, and TCU, BYU, UCF, Boise St and whoever is left can do the same with the CFP while the SEC/B1G do their own thing.

Old Big 12 should have just mirrored the SEC rivalry model. Play your division +1 rival and rotate through the other 5 less often. OU/NU UT/CU aggy/MU OSU/KSU TT/ISU BU/KU

Travel partners aren’t for football they are for other sports. But to your point USC/UCLA are already travel partners so they don’t need anymore. But if they add a school like Washington then you’d need to add another for them like Oregon to have a travel partner basically so the Midwest teams could play both on Saturday/Tuesday in basketball before heading back to ORD or wherever. Adding Oregon/Washington (and Cal/Stanford) would give USC games in their same time zone which is more valuable to your athletes as jumping 2/3 time zones every other week can be trying. By adding UW/UO they likely makes the West Coast teams all ‘rivals’ and that would be 3 annual games of your 9 game football schedule, meaning you’d only have 3 Central/Eastern Timezone games each football season. And again while you might not care, the Big Ten likely cares more as a team that doesn’t have to travel West in the middle of conference play would be perceived as having an advantage over a team that doesn’t have to. With 4 west coast teams that would be 12 of the 14 East Coast teams traveling West each year which likely helps for competitive balance. I do agree with you that the Big Ten is going to expand and it largely depends on when ND joins, and who they can add from the ACC which is why I think they slowed down expanding again. If they load up to 20 now then UNC, Duke, UVA, ND, Miami, GT, and BC all want to jump onboard then they’ll have to either go bigger than what they want or turn down schools that might give them more bang for their buck than doubling down on the the PNW or SFO.

Maybe more likely, but the SEC’s preference is for big flagship U of a Southern (or Southern-ish state). The New SEC is literally all flagship universities except Auburn, Mississippi State, and aggy. They’ll go after UNC and UVA because they are the schools with rich traditions and big fan bases that all the other Southern schools would want to associate with, the only question is do UNC/UVA want to associate with the SEC and Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Alabama or do they feel they have more in common with Michigan, Rutgers, Penn St, UCLA, and Nebraska?

On UNC/UVA, fans generally want the SEC but their administration wanted the Big Ten for academic snobbery reasons. Still, now that the Big Ten is in LA and Texas has joined the SEC I think that perspective has changed fairly significantly. Travel in the Big Ten (especially if they expand further with UW, UO, Cal, Stanford as has been rumored a while back) is not going to be easy and you’re already seeing push back from student athletes (nothing too serious yet). That may be a concern for both administrators and fans alike. Texas joining the SEC along with Vandy and Florida really helps solidify the top end of the SEC’s academic standing and, along with aggy/Mizzou, helped changed the narrative. Both conferences have 5 AAU members and only the ACC has a R2 level research school (Wake Forest) all others are R1. The ACC without ND, UNC/UVA really doesn’t look to different than the SEC and they even invited the worst academic school out of the 31 schools in Louisville so they can’t be to high on their academic snootiness. Athletically, SEC football and baseball are obviously elite, and although the ACC has historical basketball success their actual success hasn’t been all that impressive as of late. If you really wanted to build a great basketball conference imagine Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke and Kansas playing in the same conference tournament which could only happen in the SEC since Kentucky isn’t going to leave. A combo of UNC/UVA & FSU/Clemson would be great for the SEC at 20.

Men’s swimming has won 5 out of the last 8 national championships. Texas in general has won 8 national titles in the last 3 years. We’ll be fine.