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.
As discussed on Podcast, hearing little to no interest in expansion from Big 10 sources. No need to make a move. There is talk of a scheduling agreement with Pac 12 (rotation of non-con games). No, Ohio State/Michigan aren't leaving.
‘Mizzou had to take care of Mizzou’:
Why, 10 years later, move to SEC just means more!
BY VAHE GREGORIAN
Originally Posted by :
Ten years ago next month, then-Mizzou athletic director Mike Alden sat in the stands overlooking Memorial Stadium in a relatively calm moment of the realignment bedlam.
Even with Texas A&M on the brink of leaving the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference, Alden was asked as he watched a football practice if Missouri officials had been in contact with the SEC. He repeatedly and emphatically said no.
Mere moments later, ESPN’s Doug Gottlieb tweeted that a “high-ranking” source at A&M had confirmed the school indeed was moving on … and that Clemson, Florida State and Missouri also were “likely to join.”
When that was instantly conveyed to Alden, he seemed more perplexed than angry and reiterated, “There’s nothing … No, no, no.”
“It just threw me,” Alden said with a laugh on Monday.
And that was just one glimpse into those hazy, crazy days of mixed-up confusion and shenanigans and doomsday scenarios that loomed large for months and months before MU formally joined the SEC in November 2011.
“You’re worried that you’re going to get left out,” then-Mizzou football coach Gary Pinkel recalled in a phone interview Monday. “Back and forth, and people don’t trust anybody with what’s going on. I just remember it was kind of a scary feeling just because you had no idea (where it would end) … and you could be sitting here left alone with nowhere to go.”
Between Texas running roughshod over the administration of the conference and the final catalyst of then-Oklahoma president David Boren’s infamous “wallflower” remark (we’ll come back to that), any tenuous remaining trust had disintegrated.
So “Mizzou had to take care of Mizzou,” as Pinkel put it.
And did it ever, jumping at a ripe opportunity.
Of course, the move to the SEC continues to present abundant competitive challenges perhaps amplified again on Monday when the university announced that after five years on the job athletic director Jim Sterk would be stepping down once a new leader is found.
But more notably, the move also left MU with a recurring financial windfall, equal representation at the league table and the prevailing sense of a forever home that can be appreciated anew in the wake of recent events:
Oklahoma and Texas’ impending move to the SEC, which, alas, could be a crushing blow to the future of the Big 12 and thus casts Kansas and Kansas State into limbo.
“You would not have known that for sure 9 or 10 years ago, but it certainly shows today that we’re in a much, much more secure place,” said Alden, who retired as MU AD in 2015.
Crediting a cohesive system-wide effort for the shrewd and even vital maneuver, he added, “I’m so glad we’re in such a solid place today and not having to worry about all these other dynamics that are taking place throughout the country.”
To say nothing of the potential dynamics ahead as we’re all left to wonder how much further the SEC aims to take this plan for global domination — just as a 12-team playoff format is on the horizon and with the matter of name, image and likeness resetting the landscape in ways we can’t even project yet.
But whatever the end game is, you can bet the SEC will be, or already is, at the epicenter. That reflects the savvy of commissioner Greg Sankey but also a visionary culture that Alden astutely noted durings MU’s first trip to SEC spring meetings in 2012.
“What I love about it is these schools, they don’t talk about just living in the moment. They talk about what’s good for the league a decade from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now,” he said then in Destin, Florida. “And I’m not used to that. We’re used to being in reactive mode vs. being in proactive mode. And I don’t say that negatively. That’s a fact.”
And whatever the end game, Pinkel figures the 12-team playoff notion has had an impact on SEC thinking (or, we might wonder, is it the other way around?) … and on OU and Texas wanting in.
Everything from dominance of the competitive landscape to the recruiting advantages entwined with it makes for “stuff starting to add up,” Pinkel said.
Including the ultimate add-up stuff that the last monster wave of realignment taught us with no doubts: Absolutely all of this is about the television rights and money that college football commands.
Oklahoma and Texas are “just on the outside looking in, watching our league,” said Pinkel, who retired in 2015. “And we just signed a million, million, million, billion, billion dollar deal.”
More formally, as The Associated Press put it, “The SEC signed a new $300 million deal with ESPN last year that gives the network rights to all SEC football games starting in 2024 and is expected to bump the conference’s annual distribution to its members to about $68 million. The Big 12 distributed $34.5 million per school recently, down over the previous year because of the pandemic.”
To what degree all of this contradicts the fundamental notion of why our institutions of higher learning exist and even how desirable it is to continue shedding and shredding the traditional rivalries that long have been the pillars of college sport is another topic in itself.
But certainly we know some of the immediate implications and concerns, particularly to Kansas City, to which the Big 12 (and its predecessors) have been crucial.
“If you’re the Big 12 right now, you’re just scrambling,” Pinkel said. Administrators at member schools “have to be just shaking their heads.”
Ten years ago, it would have been head-shaking to picture that the schools whose actions were most responsible for MU’s departure now will essentially be following in its path.
“Maybe we were trendsetters, you know, leaving the Big 12, and maybe that opened the door and gave them courage to try it, too,” Mizzou football coach Eli Drinkwitz playfully said at SEC football media days last week in Alabama.
But Pinkel, who made no secret of his anger with Texas’ domineering ways before MU left, noted that Texas in particular will be ceding something in the SEC.
“When Texas goes into this league, they’re going to be just like everybody else; I guarantee you,” Pinkel said. “You think (Alabama coach) Nick Saban will let them have more of whatever? …
“They’re not going to get a pencil more than anybody else.”
Back in the day, and even in the years since, traditionalists like me lamented the move. And other than the SEC divisional titles Pinkel’s teams won in 2013 and 2014 (making good on the strength of Pinkel’s program that was instrumental in Mizzou being attractive to the SEC), Missouri hasn’t enjoyed much SEC success with its most visible teams.
It might also reasonably be wondered to what degree the impending arrival of OU and Texas contributed to the seemingly sudden change of AD at MU as the bar to compete just got raised and brings new urgency with it.
Just the same, it’s not like MU faces relegation for that.
And it’s easy to see now how much more sound a situation the school is in for having made a move that it came to feel forced to do.
Even given MU’s distrust and resentment of Texas, which Alden said cast a “shadow” over the league that left all with the sense that they weren’t really in it together, even considering the upheaval and uncertainty captured in that August day in Columbia 10 years ago, MU might not have left if not for what came only weeks later.
Days after the nine remaining schools pledged loyalty to the conference mission, Boren blurted out that OU wouldn’t be a “wallflower” in the realignment world.
Less memorably but more to the point, he added that “there is no school in the Big 12 more active than we are now,” in terms of considering a change as new reports suggested Texas, OU, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech were potentially headed to the Pac-12.
“That was a seismic quote,” Alden said, “and really a tipping point for lots of things that took place.”
Most immediately, it led a day later to Alden convening a momentous meeting on the roof of the Memorial Stadium press box as MU was opening the 2011 season with a 17-6 victory over Miami (Ohio) University. Boren’s words were the focus of the gathering among Alden, chancellor Brady Deaton, interim system president Steve Owens and interim general counsel Phil Hoskins, as first reported by PowerMizzou.com and confirmed Monday by Alden.
“The question was then, ‘could we effectively make a go of it with the Big 12?’ ” Deaton told Power Mizzou’s Gabe Dearmond in 2016. “We said, ‘No, we cannot.’ ”
Never mind that MU had played a role in the destabilization of the Big 12 with its overtures to the Big Ten in 2010 after then-commissioner Jim Delany launched the hysteria by saying the conference was exploring expansion. Until Boren’s statement, Mizzou was more likely than not to have stayed.
And because of his statement that suggested the Big 12 was on the verge of its demise, the SEC looked closer at Mizzou.
Behind the scenes, the SEC had been reluctant to consider another Big 12 school after Texas A&M; it didn’t want to be perceived legally or ethically as the reason for the demise of the Big 12 after the league already had lost Colorado and Nebraska in the musical chairs.
Now, that notion seems to just matter less to the league that likes to trumpet that “it just means more” to.
That’s a brutal shame for KU, K-State, Iowa State and the more remote others left to find their way in the Big 12 or elsewhere now.
But it’s to the everlasting credit of Deaton, Alden, Pinkel and MU curators of the time that this new wave and its ripples present no issue for Mizzou.
“As you look back at it now,” Pinkel said, “it’s incredible.”
Yeah, you have to give credit where it’s due. It was a forward thinking move that will see Missouri in a power conference when the dust settles, where inaction and believing the smoke the Big XII was blowing at the time would have left us in a bad position. As bad as Alden was, he and the rest of them got this right. [Reply]
Originally Posted by KCChiefsFan88:
The boss move for the Big 10 would be to try to add USC, UCLA, Washington, Oregon, Colorado or Kansas, UNC, Duke, Georgia Tech, Virginia, and Notre Dame.
They would create a national conference, dominating most of the major media markets and would stay true to their academic-focused/AAU approach (except for Notre Dame who isn't AAU, but I am sure the Big 10 would make an exception for them).
Originally Posted by RustShack:
The next domino to fall will likely be pushed by the B1G. They could add 2-6 teams from mostly the PAC maybe 1 or 2 Big12. The rest probably merging together for the weakest conference. Or if they stand pat the PAC and Big12 might try to raid each other and decide which one dies lol
Doubtful that any teams move out of the PAC unless it is Utah and Colorado. The California teams will not move unless all of them go.
Not sure the B1G10 would want Cal and Stanford whose fanbases are lukewarm at best. [Reply]
Originally Posted by :
HOOVER, Ala. — Before the story broke, before everyone realized the seismic change afoot in the SEC, commissioner Greg Sankey talked with The Athletic at SEC Media Days and spoke informally about future scheduling.
He brought up the 2020 season.
“We had 10 (SEC) games last year,” Sankey said. “But that didn’t motivate anybody to move to 10 games right now.”
OK, so scratch a 10-game league schedule as a possible solution if Texas and Oklahoma come aboard, creating a 16-team SEC. But all other possibilities appear on the table. They have to be when 16 teams are involved. Major college football has only had one other 16-team league in its modern history, and that experiment by the Western Athletic Conference in the late 1990s failed miserably and resulted in a splitting of the conference.
Don’t expect the same mess this time, but there are lessons to be learned.
Even before all this, the SEC was seriously discussing whether to do away with divisions, potentially going to a pod system. They were not seriously considering a nine-game schedule, and it’s not clear whether the addition of Texas and Oklahoma would change that. But whether it’s eight or nine games there are two obvious options for the SEC going forward:
• Two eight-team divisions.
• Ditch divisions and go to pods.
The cleanest, though not flawless, solution is to keep divisions: Texas and Oklahoma are added to the West, shifting Alabama and Auburn to the East, and Missouri — which has more natural rivalries in the West anyway — goes to its rightful destination. The result:
Potential divisions in 16-team SEC:
WEST
LSU
Mississippi State
Ole Miss
Missouri
Arkansas
Oklahoma
Texas
Texas A&M
EAST
Alabama
Auburn
Tennessee
Vanderbilt
Florida
Georgia
Kentucky
South Carolina
The beauty of this is it solves a big hang-up in the SEC’s current scheduling dilemma: Most everyone in the league has wanted to do away with permanent cross-division games, the exceptions being those involved in the two of the biggest ones: Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee. Now those would be division games.
The competitive balance also seems fine. The East may seem stronger at the top, but the West has Oklahoma plus two programs that have won national titles this century (LSU and Texas). Maybe that’s not competitive enough for some people — Georgia and Florida can’t love Alabama joining their division — so a more creative division alignment could be attempted. The ACC tried and kept that (Atlantic and Coastal), while the Big Ten tried and scrapped it (Legends and Leaders). That will certainly be discussed, but the West-East solution is most likely … if they keep divisions. And there are problems with doing so.
If the SEC sticks with an eight-game conference schedule, then visits to other league schools would still be relatively rare. You wouldn’t solve the current dilemma, where Georgia has never visited Texas A&M, and Auburn only plays at Florida once a decade, to use two of many examples.
If the SEC goes to nine league games, then it could alleviate that. A player on an East team, if he stays for four years, would be guaranteed to play each West team at least once. But he would still not be guaranteed to visit each West school.
That’s why pods come into play. Something that’s been bandied about — inside and outside the league — for some time and could be even more attractive now, as a way to keep an eight-game conference schedule but also play everyone more regularly.
The idea: Each team has three permanent opponents, maybe four, then rotates the rest of the schedule.
Potential pod alignment in 16-team SEC:
POD A(Traditional rivals)
Florida
Georgia
Kentucky
South Carolina
POD B(Traditional rivals)
Alabama
Auburn
Tennessee
Vanderbilt
POD C(Geography)
LSU
Missouri*
Mississippi State
Ole Miss
POD D(Old SWC)
Arkansas*
Texas A&M
Texas
Oklahoma
*Arkansas and Missouri could be interchanged.
The top two teams would then make the SEC championship. That’s not as clean a way to get there as divisions, because of varying schedules. But it’s not altogether clean now: Remember when Steve Spurrier petitioned the SEC to change its rules because his South Carolina team, which beat Georgia in 2012, still finished a game behind and lost the division race? In the current format, teams that draw Alabama already have a disadvantage over teams that draw Arkansas.
So the pods are a popular idea. And there’s a (somewhat) recent example to draw on.
When the WAC expanded to 16 teams in 1996, adding several Southwest Conference leftovers and other schools, it faced a tall task in putting the puzzle together with teams stretching from Hawaii to Tulsa to Houston. The WAC’s convoluted plan was to split into two eight-team divisions, and within each division were two four-team quadrants based on geography. For scheduling purposes, the divisions would change every two years, pairing two different quads, so everyone would play a home-and-home with each other within six years. The league stayed at eight conference games.
But two years into the experiment, the quad/division system had proven untenable for many members. The WAC planned to vote on permanent divisions in early 1998, scrapping the quads to help with rivalries and travel costs. That created its own problems, as longtime rivals like Colorado State, Wyoming and Air Force faced the potential of being split up and rarely seeing each other. Frustration reached a breaking point, and eight WAC schools opted to break away and form the Mountain West Conference. The WAC had become too big.
“People ask me, why did the WAC fail?” former WAC commissioner Karl Benson said Saturday. “It was the combination of different mission statements from an academic standpoint and more importantly, there wasn’t enough money to satisfy 16 teams.”
Money won’t be a problem in a 16-team SEC.
Money is a major reason it’s on the table. Benson also sees a collection of similar schools in the SEC. Figuring out scheduling will be tough, but it’s easier to get everyone on the same page when the priorities are similar.
Putting Mizzou in Pod D would be nice to see. Puts them back with former Big XII teams and even better, their old Big 8 mate, OU. Texas A&M might not like being paired with UT though. [Reply]
