Wednesday, July 20, 2011

More College Football Realignment Coming

The college football realignment rumors are up and running again.  And we are going back to the 2010 rumors about the Big 12 being no more.  The school that is starting to fuel these rumors:  Texas A&M.

A source told Sporting News on Wednesday that both Texas A&M and Oklahoma are so concerned about rival Texas gaining a recruiting advantage with the newly formed Longhorn Network, the two institutions could turn to the SEC if the problems can’t be figured out. The core issue: The Longhorn Network will televise live high school football games in the state of Texas, an obvious recruiting advantage for Texas.

And this from CFT:

Texas A&M’s Board of Regents was already set to meet this Thursday and Friday to discuss a variety of topics. Now, they’ll add a closed-door session to discuss the specifics of Texas’ Longhorn Network, set to launch next month.
A source close to the situation told the Houston Chronicle that the agenda item has been named “Big 12 Conference“.
Everybody that was happy that realignment of college football ended last year will not be happy with this news.  And I also can see a couple of more years of realignment.  And all the conference commissioners and school officials can lie about the reasons that they are doing this, but it is all about the money.  That is the reason that all these conferences are trying to get 12 teams.  That money that comes with a conference championship game.  Expansion also allows for the conferences to renegotiate their TV deals, and you know that the $2 Billion that the SEC has signed for in TV revenue will go up if the SEC does allow Oklahoma and Texas A&M into the conference.

A couple of predictions: The WAC will be eliminated as a conference.  The Big East will stop being a football conference.  The Pac-12 will become the PAC-16 with Texas, Texas Tech, Boise State, and either Baylor or Houston.  The Big 12 will no longer be a conference.  The Big 10 will expand to 14 teams.  The ACC and MWC will also expand. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pac-12/16, nor any other conference, will never take Texas with the Longhorn Network... Current Big 12 schools panicked that everything was falling apart and bowed down to Texas... Now that they, and everybody else, are realizing it, Texas will have to go independent.

Brent said...

I agree with you. The more that I look at this, the more I am convinced that Texas is steering towards independence. I am also more convinced than ever that the Pac 12 will expand to 16 as well as the SEC and Big 10. And the schools mentioned in the SEC expansion might be considered, but I have a couple of dark horses in mind for that...