SoonerScoop

One more thing I'll point out: For all the trouble they have caused, Texas never has actually been consistently good in football or basketball. So TBH if we had just been the Big 11 from the beginning without Texas it wouldn't have hurt our performance on the field and would have kept all the defectors in the league.

I don't know that this is true. I think they would take OU back in a heartbeat but not Texas. I don't even like Texas -- they are the reason the Big 12 ended up almost extinct, they are the reason we lost our rivalry with Nebraska, they are the reason A&M and Missouri left. Texas is a cancer and if we could go back to the original Big 12 minus Texas I'd do it in a heartbeat. Without Texas the original incarnation would still be in tact, and considering that the Big 12 with the new additions is almost as strong I wouldn't chance ruining it by asking the Horns to return.

They wanted us gone as bad as we wanted to be gone. I think it's a win/win. Honestly, OU wasn't good last year and UT wasn't that good either, so as much as I love my Sooners I don't see how the Big 12 is hurt by us leaving early and them being able to focus on their new schools. I'm a Brett Yormark fan. He's proven himself to be as good or better than any other commish, and quite frankly I hope Texas Tech beats Texas as well. I think everyone does.

They are worth more than any team in the SEC, and if they called tomorrow and asked to be invited the SEC would cream on itself while saying yes.

Yes, unfortunately they both are at this point. There isn't a school left who wouldn't say yes if he asked them to join the SEC because everyone not in it or the Big 10 is afraid they are about to become irrelevant. It's a terrible situation for college football to be in.

Texas wanted out of the Big 12. OU was certainly divided over it because 1) we owned it from a football standpoint, and 2) we didn't want to leave OSU (OK State) behind. Texas basically told us they were going and wanted us to come. And if we didn't come they were going to take Texas Tech with them. So we felt like we ran a huge risk of saying no and potentially being left out later if the Big 12 fell apart. Was it the best decision FOR US? Probably so. Was it the best decision for college football? Definitely not. Is it a decision we wanted to make? No, not really.

I don't disagree. While I'm glad OU is included, I can tell you for sure that we did not want to leave OSU behind. Texas was going to go to the SEC, and they were either going to take us or Texas Tech with them. We could have said no and tried to get in on our own with OSU but there are no guarantees once they were at 16 or 18 teams. And Texas was afraid A&M would scream bloody murder having both them AND Tech in the SEC meaning an additional roadblock. I know more than I really want to about it, and one thing I know for sure is we didn't want to go without OSU.

Yep. There won't be any other avenues available to increase revenue. We'll end up being back to 12 team conferences with a bunch of former elite names that are now mid-tier and bottom. There are certainly diminishing returns with the model we are headed toward.

It's being run like a corrupt business that isn't operating in the best interest of it's stakeholders. I love the thought of playing in the SEC, but if it ends up being the B1G and SEC and a bunch of P5 schools left out then that's going to be a lot of disenfranchised fans who aren't going to be tuning in no matter how much fanfare ESPN and Fox throw at it. College football has a massive amount of fans who have contributed to what it is now, and we're dangerously close to alienating more than half of them. Those left out fans have watched the SEC and Big 10 for years because they felt like they were part of it. When you alienate them, especially given the passion college fans have, you're going to lose them and then all of a sudden the pot becomes a little smaller. The assumption from ESPN and Fox is that all those fans will still be there when their school is relegated to 2nd tier status, and I just don't believe that will be the case.

I think they would be more likely to pickup OSU and Tx Tech than Baylor. It's about branding and OSU/TT both have bigger brands and more alumni than Baylor. Plus, Baylor just has a negative connotation with all the nasty scandals they've had.

The west would have to include Texas Tech, not Arizona. Other than that, not too bad. I just wish there was a way to jettison Missouri.

It's Mississippi State which is just up a rung from Washington State and just down a rung from Texas Tech. He isn't going to be recruiting NFL caliber skill players there even with being able to sell the SEC. And I'm not sure NFL caliber receivers would do any better than the less heralded ones in his offense; they all catch 9 million passes for 9 million yards and his offense isn't working like it's supposed to unless the QB hits 9 different targets. Leach has a scheme that has a ceiling. The best he ever did was get to #2 at Tx Tech and that was with a team that had the talent to win any conference. They blew out a bunch of ranked teams and beat #1 Texas, but then the QB had a bad day and they got absolutely destroyed against an OU team that Texas had beaten. The QB had another bad day and they dropped their Cotton Bowl game against Ole Miss. That's the problem with that offense, the ceiling: it keeps the defense on the field constantly, so when the day comes that the QB isn't having a great game (and that day always comes) they get their wheels blown off. Every single year Leach's team gets beaten or even blown out by a team that has no business beating them all because the QB isn't allowed to have an off game in the Air Raid. Leach's offense is good to get a struggling program over the hump to winning. But it should be used as a stepping stone to winning; then when that time comes, it's time to leverage the winning to get a great coach who runs a more traditional scheme so the program can take the leap forward to actually competing for championships. Leach and his scheme are a great building block to get to that point, but it'll never be the destination for competing at the highest levels.

I like the idea of this but A&M can stay put in the SEC. I wouldn't mind having Arkansas in the Big 12 because they are a great traditional name, and Mizzou I could take or leave. We don't need A&M since we already have more than enough Texas teams, and quite frankly Texas Tech is more noteworthy in basketball and baseball than A&M is in anything (no, we don't care about womens bb, sorry). In fact I'd rather we dump Baylor and TCU and bring in Arizona and Arizona State. So ditch the private schools, bring in UA, ASU and maybe Mizzou and we'd be good.

A&M was usually a Big 12 bottom feeder and Missouri was typically a middle to lower tier Big 12 team. I think it speaks volumes that both of them went from being Big 12 also-rans to SEC contenders immediately. The SEC is very good -- at the top. The Big 12 is deeper, which accounts from A&M and Missouri's sudden success in the SEC. What you saw from A&M yesterday is what the Big 12 saw for most of the 15 years the Aggies were in the conference. And what Alabama saw from OU last bowl season is what A&M ususally saw from OU.