camel at sea

North: OU, OSU, KU, KSU, NU, CU, ISU South: UT, TTU, BU, UH, Arky, TCU, WVU At that point, #14 as UH fits if you're creating two divisions that look like the Big 8 and SWC. That split might make sense from a branding and fan-interest standpoint. Fan interest/content will matter more in the streaming era. WVU is still an outlier but it's been less of a problem than anyone anticipated. Realistic? I agree that it's probably not. You'd need to get NU sold on the idea first, I think. But would their fans/donors be happy to essentially get the Big 8 back? No doubt. So you can't completely rule it out. Get NU on board, then CU is an easier sell when the PAC deal expires. The Big 12 + Nebraska would presumably have a money advantage on the floundering PAC. The return of NU and CU would also fulfill the Purple Wizard's "two schools want to come back" prophecy. https://www.heartlandcollegesports.com/2016/07/19/big-12-bill-snyder-two-teams-want-back-in/ And from there, Arkansas.

I'm not sure you can really know that until the next round of deals start getting negotiated. That said? Most of the PAC should be unhappy. The money is at the bottom, their kickoff time situation is so bad that they're exploring 9 a.m. kickoffs. Their actual football and basketball product has gotten really bad. Their one football blueblood has been in administrative disfunction for several years. I'd argue Nebraska should be unhappy. Boring schedule (their AD is selling the fans on future OOC games against the Kansas schools - which should say something about how they feel about their new division foes.) They've just had their worst stretch of football in more than half a century. They are basically starting from scratch in developing recruiting pipelines in regions that are outside their conference footprint. They have no rivalry games. The Big Ten just dropped the NU-Iowa game from Thanksgiving weekend for a few years so they're not even pretending on that front anymore. But I think Frost is good enough that they have a chance to pull out of the on-the-field nosedive. OU and Texas should be a little unhappy. Neither gets to host a home game within the conference slate that moves the needle for season ticket holders. The Big 12's academic profile took a major hit (however much that's actually worth) in the last round of realignment. But I don't know that either is as happy at this point in the contract as it seemed likely they'd be a few years ago. Winning, recruiting, hiring good young coaches, and making TV money solved some perception problems. West Virginia should be a little bit unhappy. (Forever grateful, obviously, but unhappy, too.) They have to schedule themselves into the ground to get any regional match-ups on the schedule to excite their fans. They'd be elated if they had Louisville's spot in the ACC, IMO. It doesn't look like the Big 12 will ever be adding any regional opponents that they might care about. Their exposure in their historic recruiting grounds - particularly Florida - has waned dramatically in the Big 12. They just had their coach poached by a G5 school.

Navy made a big deal about being in the West division when the AAC was formed. I guess they recruit the state of Texas pretty heavily. I assumed their feelings on that haven't changed. Obviously if they are up for being in the East then they make the most sense to move to the East. But if not, and if the AAC added some western teams (BYU, Air Force) the American could flip someone else to the East division instead of Memphis. Tulane would probably work, too.

West: BYU, Houston, SMU, Tulsa, Tulane Navy, Air Force East: UCF, USF, Army, ECU, Memphis, Cincinnati, Temple That's a substantial TV upgrade for the AAC. Those games against Academy schools are good for TV and good for fan attendance. It also fits "The American" branding. You could preserve the Army-Navy tradition by setting the schedule up to keep it as an OOC game. There might be very rare years where they play in back to back weeks but that might actually be pretty fun. The first game would be for the conference championship. The next week might be for a NY6 game or the Commander-in-Chief's trophy. It's not like that situation would come up very often. The trick would be talking BYU into it. But... that AAC set-up keeps them "national," it gives them a path to the NY6, it gives them more exposure in TX and FL for recruiting, there are some good home crowd draws they'd play annually, and they could still schedule some marquee OOC games, too. I'd guess it's no worse than a wash financially.

I'd guess UCLA will end up doing whatever USC does. The safe bet is always that nothing happens. But since these discussions are fun, the two together would anchor a very good "Big 12 West" division. Big 12 West: USC, UCLA, Arizona, Colorado, Tech, TCU, OK State If at some point WVU ever lands somewhere else, then the Pokes move east, ASU gets an invite, and the Big 12 West looks even more like the PAC South. We'd be at the current standard of 14 member schools.... so, not too big. Travel distances within each division would be manageable. We'd basically be a western U.S. version of the SEC in that respect. This solves the Big 12's Tier 1 football, academic branding, and media/recruiting "footprint" issues. It also improves the Tier 1 football, money, national exposure, and gametime issues for the incoming PAC schools. USC could theoretically continue playing Stanford and Notre Dame OOC. They're playing 11 P5 games almost every year already. UCLA would have room on the OOC slate to play Cal. We could even go full SEC and only play 8 conference games to make that even easier on everyone. The PAC would basically be a pacific northwest conference at this point but it would still be a power conference. They'd have enough good G5 back-fill options to get to 10, play a round robin, and still be paid well.

If you click the link to the article, this whole point comes off like some attempt at spin. You get a paragraph where Stultz (the media marketing guy) says that you should really only expand if two schools add value. Then you get a paragraph from the author of the article arguing that "two schools in the same market" nonsense. Then in the very next paragraph, "one analyst" says that the Big 12 would be smart to target both of those schools together and they'd both be smart to listen. Take out the author's middle paragraph commentary and it reads like an argument for the Big 12 to target them both.

Their research funding didn't get better compared to their regional Big 12 peers. Their US News ranking didn't improve (it got worse.) I think the talk about academic improvement is assumed to be true but I haven't ever seen any evidence to back it up.

I think they've been at a full share for a couple of years.

Big 12 1.0 should have looked into cross-division rivalry games at some point. It would have helped to tie the North and South together more closely. OU didn't want to do it in the 90s when Nebraska was rolling. There were a lot of people in Norman that thought the OU football program was so down that it might not ever fully recover. As far as I know, the conference never considered it after that. One of the other issues with cross-division rivalry games is how to split it up. You could give OU-NU and UT-CU, and that's probably relatively equitable. The Buffs won a title in 1990 and had been a legit national power for several years. But in 1996, who was aggy going to play? K-State wasn't a proven program. Mizzou was a dumpster fire. KU had basically one good year (1995) in decades. Today though I doubt OU would care much about being the only program playing both UT and NU every year. The Huskers would be a marquee in-conference game in years that OU's marquee OOC game was away. And I think Nebraska has a lot to gain by getting back its nationally relevant rivalry game. Reminding fans and recruits that they're "Nebraska" on a big TV stage would help them a lot.

If the Big 12 continues making the CFP at a higher clip than the Big Ten... then who knows. The Big 12 dominated the national football perception battle with the Big Ten for a very long time prior to the realignment stuff. It's moving back in that direction again. I'd guess that Scott Frost would prefer some games in places where he might recruit some high level skill position talent. Texas >>> the entire B1G footprint on that front. Osborne didn't recruit Texas all that hard but the modern program that Frost is trying to build would benefit from better Sun Belt exposure. Their AD, Bill Moos, has already started selling their fanbase on scheduling Kansas, KSU, and ISU during OOC. There are 4 games with OU on the future schedule, too. That doesn't strike me as a place that's entirely comfortable in their new home. Speaking of that new home... they joined to share a division (and annual games) against Michigan. That went away. They're basically in the Big 12 North again. They had a Black Friday game with "new rival" Iowa. That went away, though it's apparently coming back in a few years. They had AAU membership. Big Ten schools voted that away. Put all of that together and offer them some kind of face-saving concession (immediate full payout, annual game with OU, etc.) and that's something that could work. I don't even think they'd necessarily be taking a big media rights hit. OU isn't that far behind the B1G right now and 1) NU could expect an OU(ish) Tier 3 deal, and 2) NU would improve the Tier 1 and 2 deals for the Big 12. Their President could sell "we're going home, the only reason we left was due to cable-model driven media rights instability" to the fans and donors.

There is no news on OU's T3 at the moment. Currently Sooner Sports TV uses "powered by FOX" as part of its branding. But the FOX Sports RSNs will soon be owned by Sinclair. I'm pretty curious as to how that will play out. That change-over will happen very shortly before renegotiation begins. OU was the last Big 12 school to have a relationship with FOX for Tier 3. Everyone else is now partnered with Disney. OU would get the majority of what Boren asked for if ESPN+ offered a competitive sum to park Tier 3 content on the Big 12's ESPN+ platform. You'd have at that point a CCG, a nationally branded digital conference platform, and OU would still be competitively paid with everyone else in the country. With the entire Big 12 under the same Tier 3 partner (Disney), it would also make planning beyond 2031 an easier thing to do. Texas wouldn't be giving up the LHN but in this scenario that doesn't really matter. Currently OU makes about $4.2M per (escalating up to $4.5M by 2022) from Fox for its rights, plus another $1.8M per for production reimbursement, and it gets paid a couple million at least from Learfield to sell advertising. So I don't think it would actually take a big raise to keep Sooner brass feeling pretty good about things. Oklahoma is already even with everyone in the SEC. Staying even with the SEC is not a bad place to be. The B1G might be able to offer a media rights pay bump. But I think it would need to be an enormous bump to pull up stakes. OU's athletic department is having as good a run as it ever has (12 Olympic NCs, 4 straight Big 12 football titles, 2 Heisman winners, and a men's BB Final Four since 2013.) Rocking the boat is going to be an increasingly more difficult sales pitch on the part of those pushing it. That said, if OU doesn't get a good T3 offer, then this entire discussion changes. At that point, I think OU would be looking at leaving outright or facilitating some kind of B12/PAC partnership/merger.

The big instability trigger for the Big 12 would be OU not getting a pretty good offer for its Tier 3 content when that gets renegotiated in about a year. We'll see. On the flip side, if OU gets a really good offer (particularly if it's from Disney) then the Big 12 can use that offer to help sell someone like Nebraska or USC on Big 12 membership. If the solo Tier 3 mone is good, then it's safe to move without worrying about taking a big paycut. Getting either of those two move would also help the Tier 1/2 deal. To the extent that I think the Big 12 actually likes being smaller - and I think the league really does like it - they'd be pretty happy if they could add someone like Nebraska and just stop there. If that move created a ripple effect that sent WVU to the ACC, then even better. If 30% of your conference is blue blood, then the per-game money from your media deals will be really good. NU also gives OU and UT a good in-conference home game. If the Big 12 had interest from USC, then there's probably no way to add them without adding a bunch of current PAC teams, too. But USC moving effectively signals "everyone for themselves" where the PAC 12 is concerned.

My assumption is that Herman saw a potential edge for his team if he could get the officiating crew to start throwing flags for that.

I find it odd that a Husker fan with a non-existent posting history here was lurking on this board in the first place, just as this topic came up. It's almost as if the Big 10 has people who monitor how they are discussed online and then if necessary send someone to put out negative PR fires.

If we just traded WVU for Arkansas I think you probably improve both conferences. The SEC can move Mizzou to the West. WVU lets them plant a flag in Pittsburgh - which is better for them than Little Rock. Plugging in Arkansas makes the Big 12 a lot more viable at ten teams. Both Texas and OU would have a conference home game that the two fan bases would actually care about. And a stable Big 12 means that the B1G isn't as able to move south and encroach on the SEC's turf.

UH consistently does well on TV in the Houston market when they get a decent opponent in a decent TV window. Fans at the gate? They suck but no more so than pretty much everyone else outside the P5 (BYU excluded.) UH vs. Tech had 1M+ viewers earlier this year. That's probably the floor for UH vs. any of the Texhoma schools already in the Big 12. Who else could the Big 12 add that might deliver those types of numbers?

OU gave up about 2 plays in the entire game for longer than 15 yards. The biggest thing was that the D-line never really adjusted to Army's cut blocking. So they never shut down that fullback dive. You can't get a flexbone team off the field if they get 3-4 yards a pop on that dive play consistently. Oklahoma won't play another team this year that blocks that way. The only transitive things from that game that might carry forward is that OU's secondary looks like it's going to struggle to tackle all year.

So a crappy Houston-Tech game, with next to zero national buzz, still pulled in 1M+ viewers? And that's while splitting the region for a lot of that broadcast with the OK State - Boise game. Other interest note from that chart. Lots of Big 12 games.

There's no reason their ceiling would be lower than TCU. But more likely what you'd see is 7-9 wins per year once they get settled in. And an 8 win UH team is going to generate good TV numbers inside that market pretty consistently against Big 12 opponents.

Perception is temporary. TCU was in a major conference for 70 years. People too young to remember that bitched when they were added to the Big 12 because they didn't want to add a "mid major." That label is pretty much gone for them at this point. The thing that we should care about is 1) is that school going to win games, and 2) will our fans care to watch them. The problem I have with Boise is that I don't trust their ability to bring in competitive talent at the P5 level. They're going to be a massive resources disadvantage and they're a million miles from good talent. That said they've got good fans for the level they're at and they've won at a high level for a long time. So the football culture there is really good and ID have no doubt they'd *try* to win if promoted up.

Most of those people on the coast that you're referring to live north of D.C. And north of D.C. how many of those people watch college football? That east coast TV market is fool's gold for college football. Especially a college football conference largely based in the southwestern U.S. It's dumb for the Big 12 to make decisions based on that market. The Big 12's decision-making should primarily be driven by "how do I get DFW/Houston residents to turn on their TVs and watch this game?" When that happens for us, our TV numbers are competitively nationally. College football is regional. The South watches the SEC. The midwest watches the B1G. Texas watches the B12. California watches the PAC. The whole country doesn't tune in for anything outside of the CFP. You *do* gain something if you add a team that helps you penetrate the Houston market a bunch of times every year. You can't replicate that with an OOC game. That consistent market presence is also how you flip Houston from a split market to a solidly Big 12 market. As for buzzworthy? TCU wasn't buzzworthy. But they're working.

Iowa State fan living on the east coast in denial that Texhoma vs. Texhoma games generate better ratings than [insert G5 team from out east] vs. Texhoma school? I suspect you're trying to apply NFL logic to college football and that doesn't work. Just look at UH's TV ratings over the last few years every time they're playing a P5/Big 12 team on a decent channel. They've even had several AAC games that do really well. The UH - OU game to start the 2016 season had a better rating in the Houston market than every single college football game played on TV in the Houston market in the entire 2015 season - NY6 included. They're Top 25 in wins nationally over the last decade despite constant HC turnover. That tells me the local talent in Houston is really good. We might very well end up with P5 options in the Big 12. I'm not all in on UH. But among the G5, they're going to penetrate the Texas college football fan market better than anyone else. That's going to matter even more in a streaming era. And if you penetrate that market very well, you're pulling down a good TV rating. I don't think you could guarantee the same for Cincinnati/UCF/USF vs any big 12 team.

"If TCU brought anything to the table, they'd already be added." - Big 12 fan, 2005 We haven't been at the end of a contract period yet. A lot of things are changing (teams, university academic standing, winning, etc.) And you're the same guy arguing that the East Coast should rule decision-making on these issues. That type of thinking ignores the changes in how revenue will be made as we transition into the streaming era. And it's the same kind of thinking that tied Rutgers around the Big 10's neck for the next several decades. No thanks. I'd rather let "who gives us the best match-ups" dictate our thinking. And there's no doubt that UH is either #1 or #2 among the G5 in that regard.

You over-punted by about 50 years.

That Buffs-Huskers game is the first time I've watched either school with much interest in several years. I'd be interested to know how their fans felt about it. Those two uniforms belong on a field together once per year.