By Last Updated on July 29, 2011
Time for our weekly Friday “What Would You Do If…” post!
What would you do if you were a Big 12 Athletic Director (at any school other than Texas)? You can pick one individual school or talk about the conference in general. What if anything would you do to compete with the Longhorn Network? What would you be asking the conference to do to improve the conference? Would you be looking to move to another conference?
Feel free to take this anywhere you want – those were just some questions to get you started.
Happy Friday!
AggieGirl
July 29, 2011As an Aggie fan, I very much hope we head to the SEC but if not, we must create an online network, which Byrne has been working on. I believe the biggest impact of the LHN would be on non-revenue sports, since all football games will be televised. The draw of the LHN to non-revenue athletes is that their parents and family can actually watch their games – AggieAthletics.com could broadcast every single A&M game without nearly the investment in TV facilties. Pair it with an app for hardware so that people can watch it on their TVs, like how Netflix streams through PS3 or how ESPN3 streams through XBOX and you have an affordable solution.
Brian
July 29, 2011The first thing I’d do is stop complaining about Texas and start responding.
Why isn’t there a B12 network already planned? The P12 just gave them a useful blueprint for something that could work. They can regionalize in three groups instead of 6 (ISU, KU, KSU and Mizzou together, OU and OkSU together, and the Texas schools together) plus have the national version for big games. They could even talk to other local schools about being part of the network (JC football is big in Kansas, plenty of Missouri Valley teams have fans, I-AA schools, college hockey from the area, etc) to help draw subscriptions if need be. I’d make sure every UT road game is on the network to drive subscriptions in TX, too.
If they were planning ahead, they would have made equal carriage of the B12 network at an equal or better price the condition for any school with its own network on cable or satellite. Perhaps they can still force equal carriage in the state of TX with a conference vote, but probably not equal price.
I would seriously consider options for dissolving the B12 if I was any of the schools. They may be better off kicking out TX if things are getting too one-sided. What about dropping Baylor, or others? Maybe the northern schools as a block need to look at options like merging with parts of the Big East or MWC, or convincing the Big 10 to expand. It’s not that breaking up the B12 necessarily makes sense, but all the ADs have to consider all the options, including innovative ones, in case something happens.
Steve
July 31, 2011“Why isn’t there a B12 network already planned?”
Because the member with the most media pull, Texas, is doing its own thing and not really playing along with the rest of the conference, unlike members of the B1G 10 or Pac 12 who work together.
You make some really good points further down in the article above, though.
I think the Big XII is toast, and the only way for an A.D. to differentiate from the Longhorn Network and its $300M to Texas is to align with a power conference like the SEC or B1G 10 or Pac 12 … sucks to be those schools without options
Vincent
August 4, 2011If I was the AD at Iowa State, I persuade my counterparts at Missouri, Kansas State and Kansas to help me work like heck to get the nine Big East football members to leave that clumsy hybrid and form a new all-sports BCS league, adding Brigham Young to make it a 14-team entity. Failing that, you await the inevitable realignment (no matter how much ESPN and other powers that be try to suppress it), and hope ISU (which averages 45K for football despite lackluster results, and has had some past basketball success) can find a port in the storm.
Steve
August 4, 2011If I were the AD at Mizzou and I’ve upgraded the facilities which we did and our football is getting better year after year by leaps and bounds I would be talking to the SEC. At the same time I might be putting out a feeler to the Pac 12 about adding us and Kansas. Also with the best J school in the nation by far I would examine hard starting a Mizzou network. While this might not work nationally, it would regionally. And remember the large Mizzou alumni groups in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas so it might take some time to go national. My opinion I could be wrong.