The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

The problem is relevance. As of today, the Big 12's members are a Matt Campbell promotion away from being irrelevant to the national picture.

They play good, fun football. That's not the problem. Even alumni and fans aren't really the problem. Contracts are awarded on how much advertising you can sell. The advertisers don't care how good a game oSu/Tech is if no one's watching. If this were Texas Tech of 2008, then they're poised to kick a team out of the CFP if they win. Else, maybe another team gets in. It's interesting. Even if you don't care anything about these teams in a normal, unconnected sense, the fact that they could alter the national picture with their battle means you're showing it during a prime viewing slot.

The Big 12 doesn't have those teams. They won't unless they schedule outside ranked teams and beat them. The teams they're bringing in don't change that calculus very much - maybe BYU could. Even with Texas and OU, the Big 12 was rebuffed from contract negotiations with already established media partners.

In a world where 4 million viewers is your target, I don't see many of these games hitting 2 million.

As Texas fell short of national contention year after year, the Big 12 still had OU to brag about. If a Big 12 team played OU, there was still a chance for viewership. The Pac 12 has a USC problem right now. They're the only brand that can be nationally relevant, and they're earning a track record of consistent failure.

TV partners make their hay off those games you mentioned. The advertising bill gets run up on them that the resulting payoff makes the rest of the games gravy. The SEC has some "these games are gonna get paid" properties. The Big 10 has "it'll probably happen" ones. The ACC has several "it could happen".

Since the tenor changed from "live sports keep our carriage deals alive" to "what's a carriage deal?", I'm not sure how much a network would offer just to keep their hand in. With so few sure things, what's the appetite for bidding on a "not gonna happen" property? Maybe those networks facing being left out will tolerate the risk?

When you look at the TV numbers, OkState, KState, ISU, and Tech all pull good ratings.  Better than pretty much every school in the PAC not named USC or Oregon.

They won't get current B12 money, and probably not even current PAC money, but they'll be by far the best of the rest.

when they play UT and OU

Big 12 plans to invite BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF to join.

Looks like the best plan at this point.  This would make a pretty strong conference

So they "bridge the gap" to WV with Cincy, while simultaneously creating an even larger gap to UCF? 

Brilliant!

I looked at a bunch of numbers awhile back just to see how each school kind of stacks up with the others in the Big 12.  Not just in athletics, but in student enrollment, endowment, and other things.  The one thing that immediately jumped out at me is that even without TX/OU the remaining Big 12 schools are still mostly large state schools.  KU, KSU, ISU, TT, and oSu each have endowments in the billions, enrollment of 20-30,000, and are well represented academically.  Baylor and TCU are large private schools and prestigious in their own right.  Heck, BU just won the NCAA championship and neither A&M or UT have ever done that. 

UH compares very well with the other schools IMO.  Enrollment of 30K+, endowment over $1 billion. 
Cincinnati compares very well.  Enrollment of 40K+, endowment over $1 billion. 

UCF does not compare favorably.  The enrollment is high, 70K+, but the endowment is weak IMO.  It may just be because it's still a "new" school in that it was formed in the 60's.  Most other schools were formed in the late 1800's, so understandable.  I'm not sure if they actually have that large of a student body or if maybe they have a lot of on-line students or satellite campuses.  It's obvious they are up-and-coming.  It might not be a bad idea, Florida has plenty of growth left, and with 70K students it obviously has a lot of potential fan-base. 

BYU is really a jewel.  About 30K+ students, fans all over the world.  Almost $2 billion endowment.  They won a MNC in the 80's and have had some really good history with Heisman winners and such. 

All the other schools that were being tossed around don't even come close to these 4 if you look at these factors that I think are often over-looked. 

The estimates I've seen show the media rights to the B12 - Texas and OU to be between $12-$15 mil per school.  That is far and above the payout for the AAC which has a sliding scale and UCF gets around $7 mil.
Those schools should be interested in joining.
It isn't ideal but it looks like the best way forward.

The estimates I've seen show the media rights to the B12 - Texas and OU to be between $12-$15 mil per school.  That is far and above the payout for the AAC which has a sliding scale and UCF gets around $7 mil.
Those schools should be interested in joining.
It isn't ideal but it looks like the best way forward.

that would put all of them at about $8 mil