Randolph Duke

Hartzell has the utmost confidence in CDC. That, I can assure you. And there isn't any secret to the plan - Priority 1) stabilize the financial impact of COVID, help develop and implement NIL, finish the SEZ and bball projects. Priority 2) evaluate program head coaches, participate in preliminary media rights renewal discussions, participate in realignment discussions. That takes us to 2023. From there, evaluate priorities. Wash, rinse, repeat.

CDC saying Herman will coach in 2021 is completely consistent with how CDC operates. People who want Urban would soon be just as incensed as they are today if Urban didn't have instantaneous success. CDC wants to play the long game and build a better overall athletics program. The COVID layoffs/ position eliminations greatly accelerated Bellmont's restructuring. UT athletics has about an $80 million hole for the period of May 2020-Aug 2021. The first thing to do is stabilize the finances. next, restore the salary cuts imposed on staff. After that, there will be some mid-level hires to help CDC implement his vision for UT athletics. After that, making decisions on coaches. Then, circle back and make additional adjustments/ changes. Finally cleaning up Bellmont post-Deloss and getting all of UT athletics headed in the right direction is far more important than having Urban Meyer on campus. At least it is if you want to play the long game. Which is a game CDC knows well.

There is a reason public post-secondary institutions are subsidized by taxpayers - mostly to support the economy of the individual states. Schools such as Tech, U of H, Stephen F, etc are tasked with supporting the regional economies around them. A&M is the state's trade school. UT Austin has always been charged with supplying the white-collar professional leadership and political leadership. The Higher Education Coordinating Board is charged with ensuring programs aren't wastefully duplicated. Look at the THECB Almanac and one can see the difference in how the various schools are funded. Per full-time student equivalent (the unit of measure used to allocate funding), A&M is funded at $31,500/student ($10,000 provided by tuition, the rest from public funds). For U of H, the per student funding is $28,500. Tech - $21,571. Prairie View - $28,350. For UT Austin - $54,800. Do the math (subtract out the $10,000 for tuition) and you arrive at the fact UT Austin is funded by the public at twice the level of Texas A&M ($44k/student at UT vs $21,500 for A&M). A&M has 65,000 students on its campus and its operating budget is more than $1B less than that for UT Austin, which has over 20% fewer students. With the med school in full operation, UT Austin will soon be the second individual institution within the UT System whose operating budget is more than the academic budget of the entire Texas A&M System. Obviously, there is an understanding on the part of the Higher Educating Coordinating Board and the state legislature that the educational experience offered at UT Austin is fundamentally different than that at other schools in the state, especially Texas A&M. It has nothing to do with "the cool club." The fact is that UT Austin fulfills a completely separate function in supporting the economy of Texas than the other schools. In that light, what sense would it make to have UT Austin simply replicate the "discount" experience of Texas A&M and to affiliate with SEC farm schools and regionally-focused state universities? It has long served the interests of the people of Texas that UT Austin and Texas A&M have long fulfilled two very different roles in supplying educated workers to the Texas economy. Below is an excerpt from the A&M System financials for this academic year. Under "TOTALS" look at "Research." A&M represents the entire total of research for the entire system (both academic research and unaffiliated state agency research) as coming entirely from the College Station Campus. In reality, the academic research of the entire Texas A&M System is less than that conducted on the UT Austin campus. In both academic instruction and academic research, UT Austin far outpaces Texas A&M. The two have completely separate functions. Texas A&M does well being affiliated with the schools of the Southeastern Conference. Since its establishment, Texas A&M has been the agricultural branch college of The University of Texas and the state's de facto trade school. That UT Austin would continue to be be the state's premier academic institution (as it always has) and to be closely associated with the nation's more esteemed academic institutions is perfectly understandable. It's not about "the cool club." It's about how public post-secondary education in Texas is structured.

Why is "16" a magic number? Why even be in a conference if you only play some of the other schools once a decade? The most likely scenario is that a school's football, basketball, baseball, and Olympic sports all have the option of aligning in different "conferences" for different sports. That will allow schools with similar economic interests to maximize those interests. Like I said earlier, if Univ of Alabama can be in the SEC for most sports and in the Big 12 for others, who not recreate alliances along the economic interests of each individual sport? The conference network experiment failed to deliver the money that was hoped for. Many conferences are going to struggle as schools cut the number of sports they compete in. Assuming the current conference structure will survive intact is a pipe dream. Moving forward, at the top-tier level I can see about 70 programs in football, 325 in basketball, and about 50 in baseball. That will be the major program participation level after 2025.

What point are you trying to make? The current composition of the Big 12 is based on decisions made in the 1990s. Much has changed since then. The considerations made when creating the Big 12 have little to do with the decisions to be made during the next round of realignment. Most states in the SEC footprint spend below the national average on secondary education. This affects their ability to prepare students for post-secondary education. Look at the state of Alabama. They can't find enough in-state kid capable of handling the level of education offered at Univ of Alabama (which isn't exactly rigorous). Bama relies heavily on out-of-state students to provide sufficient white-collar graduates to sustain the state's economy. The Higher Education Coordinating Board wouldn't permit UT Austin to pivot to more closely align with the SEC schools. Texas has A&M for that purpose. UT has a completely different purpose, much more closely aligned with the national, academic universities.

I can propose a rather realistic scenario where the Big 12 may well cease to exist in less than five years. If the Knight Commission recommendations are accepted and if there are enough schools who have to cut programs, the current conference structures may well be a thing of the past. If Tennessee and Alabama can be members of the Big 12 in one sport (rowing), hybrid conferences for different sports may well be the model of choice moving forward. As for Texas into the SEC, the faculty will never accept the farm schools and underfunded state schools of the SEC as their peer institutions. Going back to 1880, UT was modeled on UVa ("Mr Jefferson's university"). Lowering aspirations from the nationally respected academic sphere to the regional and agricultural schools of the SEC would be a major cultural shift for the UT faculty. They wouldn't tolerate it for a second.

No way OU gets into the BIG. Not AAU. Texas isn't joining the SEC. Ever. When the NCAA presidents get together to discuss the future of athletics, we will get some clarity on things. Until then, nothing changes. NIL rules have to be decided on. Congress is going to get involved. The report of the Knight Commission needs to be considered. Right now, individual schools know their financial situations moving forward. next, the conferences need to assess the overall health of the various schools and look at championships are going to be supported over the next few years. Once the conferences have their shit together, Congress and the NCAA should have the NIL crap sorted out. At that point (June 2021?), realignment can start to be discussed. My best guess is that the FBS splits into two separate sub-divisions with major ramifications for the continued existence of the current conference structures.

And people will be shocked at the numbers again when the B12 announces their next television deal. CBS is going to have to pay about twice their old rate when renewing their NFL package. NFL QBs are getting well over $40 mil/yr. NBA teams have multiple players getting $40mil/ yr. The money flowing into live entertainment is huge. None of this is surprising.

While there are exceptions, I doubt it is all that common for parents to intentionally deprive their kids of the best education possible in order to get their kid admitted into a school with a 70% acceptance rate. Especially when shipping them to Blinn to get a 2.5 gpa is an option. 300,000 kids graduate Texas high schools each year. 150,000 of them go on to some sort of higher education. 30,000 of them attend some sort of UT System school. 13,000 attend Texas A&M. Roughly 1/3 of all Texas high school graduates seeking a post-secondary education attend either a UT System school or aggy. Factor in the percentage of top students attending nationally competitive schools. Getting into either UT or A&M isn't really all that tough, if the kid has the intellect. If parents are intentionally sending their kids to "less competitive" schools to get them into A&M or a UT System school, they're not doing it right.

Here is (yet another) example of why observing Texas A&M and its culture is so amusing to me. One of the ags posed the question whether A&M has become a "diploma mill." (The answer is yes - when you admit juco transfers with a sub-2.5gpa, you have essentially taken academic rigor out of the equation). One of the rednecks (who claims to "be in the know") responded with an "aggy history lesson." Of course, being aggys, the blame for enrollment at Texas A&M is so bloated is entirely placed upon....wait for it....The University of Texas at Austin. And why do the aggys believe UT Austin isn't also a diploma mill? Because UT Austin is "landlocked." Those rednecks believe both that UT Austin only has 40 acres of real estate to work with (it actually has over 400 acres), and they believe buildings can't be built with elevators, thus allowing many individuals to share the same piece of real estate. And the "cherry on top on the sundae?" This aggy believes affluent, white parents send their kids to lower performing, inner-city schools (acting against the best interests of their kids) just to get them into the top 10% of their graduating class, thus enabling their kids to be admitted to Texas A&M. As if A&M's 70% admissions rate wasn't a factor in the bloated admissions at Texas A&M. No mention of Rick Perry "reforms." No mention of 2.5 gpas. Blame it all on "the great burnt orange Satan." Oh, and if every graduating high school senior decided to attend Stephen F or San Angelo, the school would be overwhelmed with students. These people live in a world all their own. The people of Texas deserve better than Texas A&M.

Just because something isn’t obvious to you doesn’t mean the rest of us are confused. (Your premise. It’s wrong)

And we just broke 1,000,000. Well played.

They are having trouble doing contract tracing because no one will admit they were around Tom Herman.

You know its going to be an interesting day when you think you are one of the first up and you realize a small group of the truly committed have kept the party going all night. We should hit 1,000,000 by the top of the hour. Nice.

That's all you've got? Ok, if it makes you feel better... Ouch!

12,000 page views from 1 mil. We round down to the closest million. We're modest. We're Texas.

I was hoping to avoid that reality. Divide 2040 into that to find the work years dedicated to this thread. We're getting good at this.

Almost at 1,000,000 page views. At 30 seconds per viewing, that’s about 8,300 hours of lost productivity because of this thread.

DKR's legacy has been powerful. It helped a lot that DKR knew how to promote the program in the early days of televised college football. The logo, placing the logo on the helmet, getting the right color or orange. Oh, and winning big games. When people watched UT, they saw something completely different from other teams. To be fair to the fans, being one of the winningest teams in college sports does entitle one to a place in the pantheon of college football. And few programs have be as instrumental in fostering change in the sport of college football as Texas.

This is the quality of writing I pay for through my subscription to this site.

Jerry didn’t just run him down, he broke Bo’s collarbone on that tackle.

In all fairness, he never said anything about Urban and Venables coming to Austin to stay or to coach football. Maybe they are just coming down for a weekend trip to do done Christmas shopping. Or maybe Venables is coming down to help Shelly look at homes. His sons are staying in SC because neither of them share Brent’s flair for interior design. /pay me my $9.95.

So our recruiting is fucked because we live in a state with no talent and we can no longer look the other way when recruiting out-of-state non-qualifiers!?

For Fred’s sake, let’s not let Craig Curry be a pall bearer. RIP.