Anyways, Chip Brown from Orangebloods.com reports OU may apply to the Pac-12 by the end of the month.
Oklahoma will apply for membership to the Pac-12 before the end of the month, and Oklahoma State is expected to follow suit, a source close to OU's administration told Orangebloods.com.
Even though Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said Friday the Pac-12 was not interested in expansion at this time, OU's board of regents is fed up with the instability in the Big 12, the source said.
The OU board of regents will meet within two weeks to formalize plans to apply for membership to the Pac-12, the source said.
Messages left Sunday night with OU athletic director Joe Castiglione and Oklahoma State athletic director Mike Holder were not immediately returned.
If OU follows through with what appears to be a unanimous sentiment on the seven-member Oklahoma board of regents to leave the Big 12, realignment in college athletics could be heating back up. OU's application would be matched by an application from Oklahoma State, the source said, even though OSU president Burns Hargis and mega-booster Boone Pickens both voiced their support for the Big 12 last Thursday.
There is differing sentiment about if the Pac-12 presidents and chancellors are ready to expand again after bringing in Colorado and Utah last year and landing $3 billion TV contracts from Fox and ESPN. Colorado president Bruce Benson told reporters last week CU would be opposed to any expansion that might bring about east and west divisions in the Pac-12.
Currently, there are north and south divisions in the Pac-12. If OU and OSU were to join, Larry Scott would have to get creative.
Scott's orginal plan last summer was to bring in Colorado, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State and put them in an eastern division with Arizona and Arizona State. The old Pac-8 schools (USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington and Washington State) were to be in the west division.
Colorado made the move in June 2010, but when Texas A&M was not on board to go west, the Big 12 came back together with the help of its television partners (ABC/ESPN and Fox).
If Oklahoma and Oklahoma State were accepted into the Pac-12, there would undoubtedly be a hope by Larry Scott that Texas would join the league. But Texas sources have indicated UT is determined to hang onto the Longhorn Network, which would not be permissible in the Pac-12 in its current form.
Texas sources continue to indicate to Orangebloods.com that if the Big 12 falls apart, the Longhorns would consider "all options."
Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe held an emergency conference call 10 days ago with league presidents excluding Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M and asked the other league presidents to "work on Texas" because Beebe didn't think the Pac-12 would take Oklahoma without Texas.
Now, it appears OU is willing to take its chances with the Pac-12 with or without Texas.
There seemed to be a temporary pause in any possible shifting of the college athletics' landscape when Baylor led a charge to tie up Texas A&M's move to the Southeastern Conference in legal red tape. BU refused to waive its right to sue the SEC over A&M's departure from the Big 12, and the SEC said it would not admit Texas A&M until it had been cleared of any potential lawsuits.
Baylor, Kansas and Iowa State have indicated they will not waive their right to sue the SEC.
It's unclear if an application by OU to the Pac-12 would draw the same threats of litigation against the Pac-12 from those Big 12 schools.
When the Atlantic Coast Conference announced that Pittsburgh and Syracuse would be leaving the Big East and joining the ACC, it was seen as a logical move to expand the league’s footprint in the Northeast.
But as details on the backroom negotiations emerge, it is clear that the “worldwide leader” was a behind-the-scenes worldwide schemer, exerting its influence and driving the ACC toward the programs it wanted to have in the league.
The Boston Globe’s Mark Blaudschun has a story in today’s print and online editions outlining the process by which the decision was made to include Pitt and Syracuse and exclude UConn, despite the Huskies’ recent success in both football and basketball.
The money quotes:
BC athletic director Gene DeFilippo, who was part of the 12-member ACC expansion committee, adamantly denied that the move was dictated by basketball interests, but he did concede that the effects of it may boost that sport more than football.
“It had nothing to do with basketball,’’ said DeFilippo. “It was football money which drove expansion. It was football money and securing our future.’’
DeFilippo said the move was dictated in part by the expansion of the Southeastern Conference to include Texas A&M, which prompted the Big 12 to inquire about Pittsburgh, which is in the Northeast, an area in which the ACC felt it necessary to expand.
…
The ACC just signed a new deal with ESPN that will increase the revenue for each school to approximately $13 million. With the addition of Pittsburgh and Syracuse, said DeFilippo, another significant increase will come.
“We always keep our television partners close to us,’’ he said. “You don’t get extra money for basketball. It’s 85 percent football money. TV - ESPN - is the one who told us what to do. This was football; it had nothing to do with basketball.’’
Why is Disney – via ABC and ESPN – instructing a conference expansion committee on which teams to include and which to leave out? The Big East has been the victim of ACC poaching in the past. Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech all defected amid very bad blood and rather ugly legal disputes. The current round of hunting on posted land lands a historically powerful but recently weak Pitt football program and a Syracuse program that’s had only flashes of success. Left behind was UConn.
UConn has won a few titles in men’s and women’s basketball and while they lost millions on the trip, the football team earned a BCS bid after the 2010 season. With the Big 12, the Big 10 and even the SEC said to be interested in Big East schools, the conference is on the verge of implosion.
Basketball drives the Big East. Football is important, but there are seven members of the league that don’t play FBS football. Blaudschun suggests that those schools may break off and form a basketball only conference with Notre Dame.
What happens to UConn then?
Automatic BCS qualifying conferences poaching members from one another is a zero sum game. Someone has to lose for someone else to win. For the Big East to survive, it would have to either draw programs playing FBS football in another automatic qualifying conference, or offer someone in a non-automatic qualifying conference an upgrade. That opens up the possibilities for Conference USA, the Sun Belt, the MAC and other mid-major type conference schools to move up into a league with an automatic bid to a BCS bowl. But such a move would also hurt the image of a league already seen by fans as the least powerful of the BCS conferences.
Could the ESPN meddling have been a retaliatory move? Remember, the Big East turned down a $1.9 billion offer from the worldwide schemer and is said to be entertaining offers from NBC, CBS and FOX for its next media contract. ESPN is currently the first tier media partner for the league, but after helping the ACC decide which teams to kidnap from the Big East, an over-the-air network getting the deal of a lifetime is a fair bet.
It makes all the sense in the world that a league looking to expand would seek advice from the networks given that one of the primary considerations in any expansion is the impact it will have on the league's ability to land a big TV contract. I see nothing scandalous about it. [Reply]
Yeah, this is a non-issue to me. Its not like ESPN approached the ACC and ordered them to action, ACC wanted to expand and asked for their broadcast partner's input on the value of potential targets. What is ESPN supposed to do, take a vow of silence and say "sorry, but it would (somehow) be unethical for us to say anything. Go figure it out on your own, and we'll tell you later if you made the correct move or not." [Reply]
Originally Posted by alnorth:
Yeah, this is a non-issue to me. Its not like ESPN approached the ACC and ordered them to action
I agree with your post and don't really see anything wrong with it, but from the sounds of the below quote, that's exactly what ESPN did.
Originally Posted by Braincase:
The ACC just signed a new deal with ESPN that will increase the revenue for each school to approximately $13 million. With the addition of Pittsburgh and Syracuse, said DeFilippo, another significant increase will come.
“We always keep our television partners close to us,’’ he said. “You don’t get extra money for basketball. It’s 85 percent football money. TV - ESPN - is the one who told us what to do. This was football; it had nothing to do with basketball."
Originally Posted by Mr. Plow:
I agree with your post and don't really see anything wrong with it, but from the sounds of the below quote, that's exactly what ESPN did.
Not at all. ESPN did not approach the ACC and tell them to start expanding, and by the way, here's the two schools you need, the ACC decided to expand and consulted with ESPN. By "told us what to do", what that meant was "well, since you asked for our opinion, if you want to maximize revenue, these two schools will do it" [Reply]
