camel at sea

It's not just talent in the 200 mile radius, it's how many high resources programs you have to knife fight to get that talent. The DFW (and Texas overall) recruiting wars are a lot less fierce than the same fights in the southeast. There's enough talent in Texas (and Oklahoma, for OU's purposes) to feed UT, A&M, and OU top 10 classes annually. When you factor in regional competition, OU is probably about 8th or 9th in the SEC with respect to local recruiting turf - ahead of Mizzou, Arky, Kentucky, Vandy, Ole Miss, Miss State, South Carolina, and Tennessee. OU bottoming out in the SEC should still have Auburnish talent.

Grinch is... alright. He'll eventually have a Top 30-50ish defense out there. He won't have a Top 10 defense even if he has Top 5 talent on that side. His scheme doesn't get better with better talent and he's not a good position coach so the secondary is going to be an issue unless they get good at using the portal to bring in already developed DBs. Riley's offense at OU got figured out, too. I'm interested to see how he adjusts. He had really good offenses at East Carolina when he was running a more pure Air Raid. His big OU wrinkle was incorporating the GT pull concepts into the run game. The last couple of years though everyone just started dropping 8 into coverage against him and he had no counter for that. He'll have to come up with one or do a major scheme change for the run game.

Yep. And Asamoah probably made himself some money at the Senior Bowl, too. Venables is a big upgrade for OU over Alex Grinch.

It's probably too early to say how the portal stuff will play out bc there seems to be quite a bit of agreement that this is not working out as well for players as everyone thought it would. There are a ton of guys who enter the portal and don't land anywhere. I'd expect further rules changes at some point. That said... Oklahoma State had a bunch of guys enter the portal after their bowl game. The entire SEC is bleeding highly recruited back-ups to the portal. Schools like Oklahoma State are going to lose 3rd year development projects here and there and they'll get back 1st year guys who were blue chippers that didn't want to wait 3 years as back-ups at Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, etc. If you go down a level, SMU is about to add a couple of former Top 100 recruits in this transfer cycle. The Big 12 will be getting those type of transfers, too.

Eh, BYU, OSU, and WVU have had consistently good (though not great) TV numbers for a long time whether winning 10+ games or not. Whichever of the Texas schools are good in a given year will do well on TV, too. The Big 12 doesn't have a big brand but I'd imagine the TV numbers will compete well with the PAC and ACC from top to bottom as long as the quality of football in the league remains good. I think the quality of the football will remain good b/c the donors are going to continue to care at those places. There aren't huge brands but there also isn't a lot of completely dead weight fanbases even after expansion. The high amount of local football interest will carry the Big 12's TV ratings until one of the left behind programs emerges as a new money brand. A lot of Okies who are primarily OU fans are going to watch OSU games, too. A lot of Texans who are primarily UT fans will watch UH, TCU, Baylor, etc., if they're ranked. And I think the Big 12 will adapt on the recruiting trail. Is it going to be hard, all of a sudden, for Gundy to sign a bunch of high 3 star players to develop? No. Same thing with Aranda at Baylor, Dana at UH, Dykes at TCU, etc. None of those places have ever been good b/c of highly touted recruits. They're good b/c they've always done a good job developing the guys who are not blue chips. I don't see any change to the recruiting status quo. If anything, conference championships are going to help Big 12 schools compete on the recruiting trail against the SEC schools that win less after OU and UT move.

Yeah. The 2016 TV numbers for UH were really good. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings-archived/ The year before they hadn't had a chance to get their bandwagon going yet and still had good numbers locally - despite playing AAC teams. https://twitter.com/UHpres/status/675032058650099712/photo/1 It will be interesting to see how the fanbase and the city react to Big 12 teams on the other sideline every week.

The Big 12 4.0 (5.0?) is going to be fine with Houston. They won't be too regional b/c the league is going to stretch north through Iowa and then east to Ohio and West Virginia, with yet more flags in Florida and Utah. They needed to add the best available programs and I think Houston was undoubtedly one of the best four available. Winning games is how the Big 12 will develop national interest. Keeping a toehold in Houston will be important for them, too. Honestly the Big 12 West will be a lot of fun to watch. That whole division will have a cats in a sack dynamic which will be pretty fun. West: BYU, Tech, TCU, Baylor, Houston, OK State ---> That's going to be pretty even and highly competitive.

B1G raiding the PAC makes the most sense. The PAC is vulnerable before the ACC. The PAC cannot expand east and become financially competitive. So the only path forward for the west coast schools with some value is to leave the PAC. That said, it's hard to know who moves and how the politics of that play out. I guess you'd have to leave PAC 5 + Kansas on the table as an option for "The Big 20" also.

^This is the alignment that makes the most sense after UT and OU leave. That West division is awesome. But if there's an interim season at 14, then I don't think it makes sense for the Big 12 to create the possibility that OU and Texas could play in the Big 12 title game on their way out the door. So... you'd probably need to put BYU or Houston in the division with the "East" schools until it goes back down to 12. West: BYU/UH, TTU, TCU, BU, UT, OSU, OU East: UH/BYU, KU, KSU, ISU, Cinci, WVU, UCF You could throw a bone to the Coogs and send one of the outgoing schools to their home stadium as one of the cross-division games. I'd imagine that would help encourage cooperation.

I'd think the Big 12 would protect the game due to TV partner pressure if for no other reason.

I think you might be overselling that a bit. In 2020 Gabriel had 32 TDs against 4 INTs when he was still running Lebby's scheme. He had 9 TDs and 3 picks in 2021 - in a new offense - in almost 3 full games before his injury. I doubt anyone would argue that the kid is not a downgrade in terms of talent but he was highly coveted in the portal for a reason. Either way, the coaching staff in Norman is significantly improved and the recruiting fallout has been negligible. Venables bringing Bates with him to coach the DL is a massive win for Oklahoma. I doubt OU could have come out of the Riley situation any better than they did.

OU upgraded its S&C staff, significantly upgraded its defensive staff, energized its BMDs, the new OC has been better than Riley statistically over the last three years, they signed a Top 10 class, and they just landed a top 10 transfer portal QB who already has experience in that offense. Even with Rattler and Williams leaving (the latter of which hasn't happened yet), it's hard to imagine how any of this could have gone any better for them.

Yeah. Creed has been a lot better in the NFL this year than he was in his last year of college. OU whiffed entirely on its 2018 and 2019 OL classes. The factor that changed was the S&C coach. 2018: Brey Walker - 5 star Tramonda Moore - 4 star Darrell Simpson - 4 star David Swaby - 3 star 2019: Stacey Wikins - 4 star EJ Ndoma Ogar - 4 star Marcus Alexander - 4 star Finley Felix - 3 star There's still a lot of frontline talent in that OL room if the players don't quit once the S&C staff starts challenging their manhood. Bedenbaugh has recruited really well on paper. Just kind of goes to show how catastrophically bad the Bennie Wylie hire was.

Best argument for this would be that the financial gap between the SEC/B1G and ACC is about to to keep Clemson from competing at the elite level where they compete now. Mel Tucker just signed a $95M contract for one good season at Michigan State. He's out-earning Dabo by more than $1M per. Kelly and Riley are going to be making a lot more than that. When the new SEC contracts kick in, how hard will it be for Clemson boosters to make up the revenue difference between the two conferences and how long will it be sustainable if they do? So... if Dabo were to jump ship to OU now, he doesn't have to do an extensive rebuild, and he never has to worry about the football budget / facilities budget / etc. It still seems extremely unlikely to happen but after the last few days of coaching turnover, it seems somewhat less crazy.

MAC - Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky Sun Belt - Southern Miss, Marshall, LaTech (?) AAC - UNT, UTSA, Rice, Charlotte, FAU, UAB UTEP is screwed unless the MWC changes its opinion of them. Liberty should probably make the cut for the Sun Belt over schools like FIU and Old Dominion but we'll see how that goes. I suspect that the politics for LaTech getting an invite might be bad but I think they're the best fit.

A&M left for the SEC a decade ago to be special. They didn't care about the games in-state b/c they deemed the out of state games to be better for their brand. SMU could leave the AAC to be "special" and in the best branded G5 league. Boise, SDSU, Air Force, etc., > most of the schools they'd play in the American from a perception standpoint. If they could go with Tulsa, Wichita St, Gonzaga, and land in a much better basketball conference too? It's an even easier sales pitch. If SMU arranged to help a bunch of Texas schools land in the American and if they then arranged to make sure none of those schools could go with them when they leave the American, it wouldn't exactly be the most shocking betrayal in the CR era. They'd argue that they helped the American and the schools who got invited. The MWC rights deal ends in a few years. The ESPN exposure/money issues could be non-existent if the MWC ends up with the right inventory. The inventory will bring the money. Then again, maybe SMU would rather play UNT, UTSA, Rice, etc. It's all in how they see themselves. I'm interested to see how it plays out over the next few years.

I think the Sun Belt might raid a couple of schools from CUSA to get to 12. I'm not sure that anyone else will raid CUSA unless it's in a trickle down scenario. It's hard to see any way that CUSA survives without raiding the FCS ranks and it looks like they're going to have enough schools left over that they will likely decide to do that. But maybe they go all in on being an eastern conference and make a push for Liberty, UMass, football-only UConn, Army, etc. That said, I think more movement is pretty likely. Boise and Memphis are likely to go to the Big 12 at some point. I'd really like to know what SMU brass/donors think about sharing a conference with UNT, UTSA, etc. Joining the MWC might be viewed as a way to elevate their brand above the other G5 schools in the state.

Rattler is pretty similar to Mayfield athletically but Mayfield had better pocket awareness and was a little bit more eager to take a hit. But it's hard to compare them. Mayfield was in college for five years. This is Rattler's 3rd year and he didn't have a normal offseason before 2020. OU's big problem on offense is that Riley only has two scholarship RBs on the team and he's keeping them on a pitch count. He's going to have to find a walk-on he trusts or turn one of his HB/WRs into an RB. That Bradford kid transferring back to LSU the week before the season started really screwed them.

You were probably right about where Houston ranked. I strongly suspect that the TV input on Houston overrode the fan/admin sentiment against them and the admins were forced to accept it. The whole situation is funny to me bc the UH side of it overvalues themselves while the TCU/Baylor/Tech/OSU side undervalues them. I don't see UH replicating their SWC success in the Big 12. The SEC is going to get the in-state blue chips. Maybe Houston or one of those other schools will figure out how to leverage NIL money to compete with the upper tier of the SEC but I doubt that will happen for a sustained period of time. The Big 12 will likely remain mostly a coaching/development league. It'll be hard for anyone to pull ahead of the pack for very long unless or until someone's fan support / donor money pulls way ahead of the others.

1) The Big 12 North's old schools did NOT want expansion. Their admins were pissed that OU kept bringing it up and trashed Boren - by name and childish insult - to the KC media. None of these types of stories were coming out of the Texas media at the time despite UT being (allegedly) on the other side of the argument. And in case anyone has forgotten, OU also wanted to invite Louisville a few years earlier. The Big 12 North schools said no then, too. I am not even completely certain that UT opposed expansion in 2015. At least publicly, UT openly campaigned for Houston. I think UT was willing to expand in exchange for a UT-H campus. I know for certain though that the KC area school admins did not want to expand under any circumstances even if the fanbases of those schools did. Boren was openly lobbying for Cincinnati to get an invite. https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/big-12-changes-its-mind-and-reverses-walk-on-rule-helping-baker-mayfield/ 2) Remember the "Baker Mayfield Rule" vote? Tech and Texas both voted for the rule change. Which three school admins do you think voted against it? I bet at least two of them were in Kansas and Iowa. 3) OU has been bitching about the 11 a.m. kickoff times for years. They've had more of them than anyone else in the league and it impacts the ability to host recruits from the west coast. Bowlsby and the rest of the league has pretty much done nothing except to say "you signed the contract, suck it up."

If the CFP expands, nobody is going to have a bowl tie-in. The major bowls will be part of the playoff and won't have a say in who plays year to year. Alternatively, if the bowls end up being pushed out of the playoff process, the tie-ins will be worth a lot less. SEC #5 vs. Big 12 #3 is not worth a huge annual check. That said, I'd guess that the Big 12 v4 ends up getting a big slice of the expanded CFP pie (more than enough to offset not having the Sugar Bowl tie-in.)

Hypothetically it's possible. They're an academic and geographic fit. They're a long way from fitting athletically. If they were to win big for the next 15 years (multiple AAC championships, good TV numbers, a few expanded CFP trips), and if all of that success became P5 caliber facilities, then maybe they could partner with someone else to get in, in the way that Rutgers came in with Maryland. That said, the Rutgers add is going poorly. I saw an article this week suggesting that Rutgers might have to jump ship out of the Big Ten due to not being able to afford the increased expenses of Big Ten membership. I don't think the B1G will be in any hurry to repeat anything that resembles the Rutgers experiment.

East: Buffalo, Army, Temple, Liberty, ECU, Georgia State, USF West: Air Force, Navy, Tulsa, SMU, UTSA, Rice, Tulane This is probably how I'd do AAC expansion.