TKthunder2

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.

This has always been the case. The ACC is not really in danger of falling out of the P5 because they have many quality backfill options. WVU, Cincy, UConn, Memphis and if they lose FSU/Miami they’d take UCF/USF and still have a pretty solid conference. Worse case example: BC, UConn, Syracuse, Pitt, WVU, Cincy, Lville, Memphis, Duke, Wake, UCF, USF

No, most of that was raised. The PUF doesn’t get dispersed to the general endowment. The AUF gets distributed annually to pay interest on PUF bonds pulled for capital improvements and cannot go towards operational costs. Most of the non PUF endowment comes from fund raising. 2006-2014 $3billion was raised. 2016-2022 $3.3 billion was raised. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/05/university-texas-fundraising-endowment/ https://www.texastribune.org/2014/09/02/ut-austin-mission-accomplished-forh-3-billion-camp/

The new SEC will have 8 teams that have a FBS national championship in the BCS/CFP era. 3 teams have legacy national championships from way back in the day and 5 teams have never won a title. If the 11 teams with a title, aggy’s is by far the oldest. Alabama, LSU, Florida, Georgia, Auburn, Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee are in the first group. Arkansas, Ole Miss, and aggy are in the 2nd group.

PUF in 2022 was valued at $24billion. Only 2/3 of that is for UT so $16 billion for the entire UT system. The endowment for the entire UT system is $43 billion as of 2021. So the PUF only makes up 37% of the UT System endowment.

PUF doesn’t even make up half of the endowment anymore. They raised over $3 billion nearly a decade ago just from bugging the shit out of our alumni.

lulz 8 teams in the new SEC have BCS/CFP titles and you have aggy as the only school that has 3 of the 8 as rivals. All others are playing 1 or 2 max. I’m not aggy fan, but I can’t see the SEC shitting on them that badly (though I’d laugh if they did). Other than that, this is a really solid plan that I think would satisfy just about every team in the SEC outside of College Station. Only a few active rivalry misses (some of which for competitive balance and simple mathematics have to occur): aggy/Arkansas (this was always forced anyways, everyone knew Arkansas just wanted a Texas annually again) Arkansas/LSU (again this was forced to since neither had a rival for rivalry weekend, conference could make sure they have LSU and aggy opposite each other on their schedule so they for sure play 1 of these two each year) Ole Miss/Vandy (this one is real but both keep their #1 and #2 rivals so it’s expendable) Alabama/LSU (massive loss by not having this game but more so on LSU’s side than Bama, this one has to go to keep a competitive balance, Bama can’t be rivals with Auburn/Tenn and LSU and have a 4th major game from UF/UGA/Texas/OU that would just be too much) UF/Tenn (doesn’t have as many matchups as it made out to be, Tenn is in high demand as Vandy&Kentucky’s #1 rival, and UF has UGA&LSU so dropping Tenn makes sense, especially since you know they would have dropped them in order to restore their annual game with Auburn if they could. Tenn could have UF/UGA opposite each other on the schedule so they play at least one every year and Florida could mirror the same setup with Tenn/Auburn too)

You’re just plain wrong on this one. Of course Cincy and UCF would have picked the Big 12 over the PAC but for obvious geographical reasons. Houston would want to join the power conference that had the remaining SWC members but if USC hadn’t blocked expansion in the wake of UT/OU’s departure announcement that scenario would have been drastically different. Tech and Oklahoma State (the two schools perceived as the biggest powers remaining) would have bolted immediately so secure their spots in a P4 conference. The PAC12 securing themselves with 12 and dropping the Big 12 permanently down to number 5 in the pecking order. Both schools are quality big state non religious that were already previously invited to the conference (as tag-a-longs) and could have bolstered the ranks of the PAC with little debate. Then the PAC12 could have reviewed its options and taken its time to grab #13/14 and even 15/16 if the numbers justified it. They would have had it’s pick of the remaining R8 schools like Kansas, K State, Iowa State, TCU, and Baylor, plus expansion candidates like BYU and Houston. My gut says they would have gone with Kansas, Houston, TCU, and Iowa State; then you’d have a PAC that looked like this: UW, WSU, UO, OrSU, Cal, Stan, AZ, ASU, Utah, CO, TT, TCU, UH, OkSU, KU, ISU and a Big 12 that looked like this: SDSU, Boise St, BYU, Baylor, SMU, K State, Cincy, WVU, Memphis, Tulane, UCF, USF Clearly the PAC would have been the better conference and would have secured their spot as #4 maybe even #3 after the upcoming ACC raids. I don’t blame USC for leaving, but let’s not act like their choices (coupled with Stanford/Cal’s arrogance) weren’t directly responsible for relegating the PAC12 down to the worst P5 conference.