CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => SEC => Topic started by: Thumper on July 27, 2021, 12:15:13 PM
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I really didn't know where to post this.
Here is the timeline as I see it.
Monday 7/25/21 OU/UT notify B12 they are not extending the Grant of Rights
Tuesday 7/26/21 OU/UT send formal request for invitations to SEC, SEC acknowledges. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10008816-texas-oklahoma-request-to-join-sec-in-2025-sec-reportedly-to-discuss-thursday
Thursday 7/29/21 SEC meets to discuss expansion (approve invitations?)
Friday 7/30/21 morning OU BOR & UT BOR separate meetings to discuss conference affiliation (announce SEC acceptance?)
That is one momentous week!
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after that the question is when will the first year be
some have said 2025 but I think 2022 or 2023
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July 1, 2025.
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Everything I have seen says 2022.
When NU and MU left, their buyout was reduced to $12.5 and they played the next season in B1G/SEC. I believe aTm's buyout was $12.5 mil also.
Several things come into play. If one or more of the remaining 8 leave, the conference is dissolved, there are no payouts. OU and TX both stated they will honor their GOR so they have not left the conference and still have full rights. They could spike any additions to the conference if the Big 12 tries to force them to stay.
When the 4 members left last time, I believe ESPN/Fox kept the TV contract with little or no reduction and then put in a nice deal when TCU/WVU joined. I would think they would do something similar this time.
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Everything I have seen says 2022.
When NU and MU left, their buyout was reduced to $12.5 and they played the next season in B1G/SEC. I believe aTm's buyout was $12.5 mil also.
Several things come into play. If one or more of the remaining 8 leave, the conference is dissolved, there are no payouts. OU and TX both stated they will honor their GOR so they have not left the conference and still have full rights. They could spike any additions to the conference if the Big 12 tries to force them to stay.
When the 4 members left last time, I believe ESPN/Fox kept the TV contract with little or no reduction and then put in a nice deal when TCU/WVU joined. I would think they would do something similar this time.
There is one difference now than there was ~10 years ago. Back then, when the Big 12 was wavering, all the member schools essentially took a poison pill regarding their media rights (2nd and 3rd tier rights). I don't remember all the details but supposedly they did this to make it really hard for any member to leave without paying a much stiffer penalty.
I'm obviously going off of memory, and maybe that initial deal has already expired. I've also heard that UT is going to forgo the balance of the LHN ($150 million), ESPN will then up the contract to the SEC by some other large amount, and voila they have the extra $20-30 million each to leave, and ESPN saves money by killing the LHN which I'm led to believe is a money loser for them and has been. LHN folds into the SEC network, most likely as SEC West Network, and everybody is happy.
Does anybody remember the details of the poison pill the Big 12 members took?
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You're referring to the Grant of Rights. The Big 12 members signed their 1st tier rights to the conference until 2025 so that if a member leaves, the rights to their games remain with the conference. That is why the date 2025 comes up when talking about OU/TX leaving. That is in addition to the exit penalties. In theory, it sounds like a real sticking point. In reality, not so much.
A former poster, Pirate's Roost had some very good legal explanations why.
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Then that brings me to my next idea. Since OU/Tex will have to pony up somewhere between $20-30 MM each that could be a potential windfall for what's left of the Big 12. They still have a good core group of schools, mostly larger state schools and a couple of high profile private schools. You've got 8 teams left, you need at least 2-4 teams to make yourself whole. They take the windfall money, throw everything they got into saving the conference, entice a couple of good/great AAC teams with bigger payouts and at the very least name recognition. The Big 12 will never be what it once was but surely will be ahead of what the AAC is now.
The XII could do a lot with $40-60MM, assuming they can hold it together long enough to get a few schools on board.
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That sounds reasonable to me. Some of the schools understand. TCU pointed out they are in their 6th conference since 2000 and they came from a G5 conference. Jamie Pollard of ISU once said "Without Texas and Oklahoma in this room, we're the Mountain West".
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Oklahoma Sooners, Texas Longhorns formally notify SEC of membership request for 2025 (espn.com) (https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/31897367/oklahoma-sooners-texas-longhorns-formally-notify-sec-membership-request)
Oklahoma (https://www.espn.com/college-football/team/_/id/201/oklahoma-sooners) and Texas (https://www.espn.com/college-football/team/_/id/251/texas-longhorns) have formally notified the SEC they are seeking "an invitation for membership" beginning July 1, 2025, according to a joint statement from the flagship programs of the Big 12.
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Then that brings me to my next idea. Since OU/Tex will have to pony up somewhere between $20-30 MM each that could be a potential windfall for what's left of the Big 12. They still have a good core group of schools, mostly larger state schools and a couple of high profile private schools. You've got 8 teams left, you need at least 2-4 teams to make yourself whole. They take the windfall money, throw everything they got into saving the conference, entice a couple of good/great AAC teams with bigger payouts and at the very least name recognition. The Big 12 will never be what it once was but surely will be ahead of what the AAC is now.
The XII could do a lot with $40-60MM, assuming they can hold it together long enough to get a few schools on board.
If divorce negotiations go the way that they did when A&M and Missouri left, OU and Texas will each owe 41.33 percent of $80 million. That works out to $30.6 million apiece.
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The problem is the assumption that Big 12 media rights, sans Texas and OU, will be worth more than the AAC's media rights. The Big 12 was already rebuffed by TV when asking to revisit the deal. Without Texas and OU, the media disbursement for the Big 12 may very well fall below that of the AAC.
In that light, I do not expect stable AAC schools to quickly sign over to the Big 12 - if at all. Should the ACC or the PAC12 decide to expand (maybe the Big 10 would kick the tires on ISU or KU), the Big 12 would fail yet again.
I'm not a power broker by any means, but it's hard to predict a future where the Big 12 exists.
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I looked it up. The top AAC schools are much closer to the size of the remaining B12 schools. UH, Cincinnati, UCF are 30,000+ students. The endowments are similar. Honestly I wouldn’t bother with the rest. SMU, Memphis, etc.
You’d need one more, and truthfully there’s not a great next candidate unless you can convince BYU but it is a stretch. WVU go Utah is a long damn way.
Just pick one from whichever makes the most sense. The conference will have an extra $60 MM as the bait. 60 MM divided 8 ways is 7.5 MM above the standard payout but if they were smart they’d use that money to draw in the best of the rest.
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I looked it up. The top AAC schools are much closer to the size of the remaining B12 schools. UH, Cincinnati, UCF are 30,000+ students. The endowments are similar. Honestly I wouldn’t bother with the rest. SMU, Memphis, etc.
You’d need one more, and truthfully there’s not a great next candidate unless you can convince BYU but it is a stretch. WVU go Utah is a long damn way.
Just pick one from whichever makes the most sense. The conference will have an extra $60 MM as the bait. 60 MM divided 8 ways is 7.5 MM above the standard payout but if they were smart they’d use that money to draw in the best of the rest.
Get the schools you named plus the next-best program in the ETZ, and you've got a 3-team neighborhood for WVU. Memphis might be the closest thing to that.
If you get BYU, then you've got to consider that WVU will be going elsewhere at some point.
P.S. Is Tulane a worthwhile get, just to get into New Orleans? How about La. Tech?
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Both Tulane and La Tech are small schools. Less than 15k students.
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Both Tulane and La Tech are small schools. Less than 15k students.
Those are monsters compared to Tulsa, which has ca. 4,000 students.
When I was a student at OU in the '70s, enrollment was barely 20,000/
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You're referring to the Grant of Rights. The Big 12 members signed their 1st tier rights to the conference until 2025 so that if a member leaves, the rights to their games remain with the conference. That is why the date 2025 comes up when talking about OU/TX leaving. That is in addition to the exit penalties. In theory, it sounds like a real sticking point. In reality, not so much.
A former poster, Pirate's Roost had some very good legal explanations why.
Yes, exactly. I wish he were still around, I'd love to hear his take on these current goings-on.
I'm no attorney, but in lay terms, it looks like this. Texas and OU announce their intent to go to the SEC and, let's say, it starts in the Fall of 2022. They've "granted their rights" of television broadcasting to the B12 through 2025.
But on September 3rd, 2022, when the Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks show up in Austin, it's the SEC's broadcasting crew from either CBS or ESPN or SECN that shows up to televise the game. It's not the B12's broadcasting crew from Fox. There's no "television broadcasting police" that is going to show up and force Texas to allow a Fox crew to broadcast it.
So for the remainder of the 2022 season, Texas broadcasts its home games through the SEC's contracts with Disney and CBS. At the end of the SEC fiscal year, the SEC pays Texas its portion of the total SEC distribution for all sports broadcasting. That money is in Texas' hands, not the B12's.
Now, the B12 could withhold the prior year's distribution, since those don't go out until the end of the fiscal year and I think that happens sometime in the summer. And the B12 could also sue Texas and OU for whatever portion of the SEC distribution they feel covers the GOR contractual obligation.
But in reality, suing a public university is extremely difficult, and it's expensive, and consequently it never gets that far. In the end, it's just another negotiated settlement that ultimately will end up being less than the stated contractual amount, and most likely it will be significantly less.
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Good points, utee. There is also the matter that ESPN has claim to some of the OU - Texas games whether they are in the Big 12 or the SEC. Oddly enough, both OU and Texas had a strangely high number of OOC games scheduled with the SEC over the next few years. :72:
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Curious, isn't it...?
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I know UGA scheduled series with OU and TX. I guess that is altered now. UGA also had scheduled OSU and FSU and Clemson, so it wasn't unique to those first teams.
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OU had scheduled UGA, Tennessee, LSU and Alabama home & home series but that is spread out until 2033. I thought they had Arkansas but I checked and it is Arkansas State.
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Horns have Alabama, Florida, and Georgia on the upcoming OOC schedule.
We also have Ohio State and Michigan. I guess we'll need to change the first three to something else. I'd like to see Clemson, USC, and Notre Dame as replacements.
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Maybe not necessarily. We are changing to a 9 game schedule from all accounts. So if the former OOC game occurs in the same season you would otherwise play then you’re just shifting from a ooc oponent to an in conference opponent.
Plus really by the time this thing ripples through all the conferences and such all the schedules will have to change.
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I imagine a lot is going to shift around now. Playing 9 conference games AND Clemson, FSU, and Tech, seems like a lot to me.
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FTR, OU has the following OOC games scheduled:
2021: Nebraska, Tulane, W. Carolina
2022: Nebraska, UTEP, Kent State
2023: Georgia, Tulsa, Arkansas St.
2024: Tennessee, Temple, Tulane
2025: Michigan, Temple
2026: Michigan, New Mexico, UTEP
2027: LSU
2028: LSU, Temple
2029: Nebraska
2030: Nebraska, Tulsa
3031: Georgia
2032: Alabama
2033: Alabama
2034: N/A
2035: Clemson
2036: Clemson
I imagine that the games vs. B1G and ACC opponents will remain. I hope so.
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Maybe not necessarily. We are changing to a 9 game schedule from all accounts. So if the former OOC game occurs in the same season you would otherwise play then you’re just shifting from a ooc oponent to an in conference opponent.
Plus really by the time this thing ripples through all the conferences and such all the schedules will have to change.
We've got 3 teams, 6 games, scheduled over the next 12 years, with the SEC. I doubt many of those are going to line up in the correct years.
Also, Texas is already on a 9-conference-game schedule, so shifting those OOC matchups with SEC teams to the in-conference schedule, still leaves holes in our upcoming OOC slots.
And I'd love to see those filled with teams like ND and Clemson and USC.
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There will be lots and lots of slots open from the old B12 schools. No worries.
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FTR, OU has the following OOC games scheduled:
2021: Nebraska, Tulane, W. Carolina
2022: Nebraska, UTEP, Kent State
2023: Georgia, Tulsa, Arkansas St.
2024: Tennessee, Temple, Tulane
2025: Michigan, Temple
2026: Michigan, New Mexico, UTEP
2027: LSU
2028: LSU, Temple
2029: Nebraska
2030: Nebraska, Tulsa
3031: Georgia
2032: Alabama
2033: Alabama
2034: N/A
2035: Clemson
2036: Clemson
I imagine that the games vs. B1G and ACC opponents will remain. I hope so.
all that work wasted
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all that work wasted
Getting the Georgia series scheduled was really difficult.
OU wanted a great OOC opponent for the Centennial of Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in 2023, and Georgia was the pick. Note when the return game was scheduled.
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The Dawgs have a pretty full plate towards the end of the decade on OOC games, or used to anyway. They play 3 P5 OOC games a year for several years, including several barn burners like Ohio State. Much of that will get reworked obviously, especially if they start playing 9 conference games in 2025.
I'd guess all that OOC work is out the door now, or much of it.
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There will be lots and lots of slots open from the old B12 schools. No worries.
Heh, true enough. But those teams scare me.
Maybe we can get our ol' automatic win-- the Nebraska Cornhuskers-- on the schedule for a few of those years.