It's time for OU to give Texas the proverbial middle finger

As a UT grad and fan, I appreciate where you are coming from and don’t really disagree with any of it from your perspective. But at the end of the day, I think it’s hard to blame Texas for doing what it’s done, and I would put the blame, as you mentioned, squarely on OU’s administration (and that of other schools) for simply playing follow the leader. Any school would do what’s Texas is doing and go after the money—there’s no reason not to do so. The other conferences prohibit individual schools from creating their own networks, so again it goes back to the Big 12 having different rules.

My biggest problem with it all is not that we’re creating our own network, but rather that Texas will turn into the Evil Empire (as mentioned in other posts here), and everyone will hate Texas (i.e., Lakers, Yankees, Notre Dame, etc.). We all understand why OU, A&M fans, etc. have always hated us (and the feeling is mutual), but it has gotten to the point where there is nation-wide rooting against Texas, which is too bad.

The thought of a network devoted to one school and funded by ESPN is very slimy and raises tons of questions, as you describe, and any honest fan would agree. But if someone throws $300M your way, I don’t think any school these days would say no.

Now you see why Colorado and Nebraska bailed out.
I think all of this will be a mute point in a few years.
The attempt to have a “super conference” this past season will not end with this past season. I have not doubt it will come around again and maybe OU should go for it this time.
Much as I hate Texass I can’t blame them for wanting the $$$$,after all college football is a business….

OU should do everything they can to break away from Texas. If we can play them out of conf, then fine. If not, that won’t hurt my feelings. OU does not need Texas as a conf member. We made it for decades in different conferences and survived. If the RRSO has to go away, so be it! We don’t NEED to play them. I honestly can’t say that I’d miss it. Frankly, I always thought more of the Nebraska rivalry and have learned to live without that. Losing Texas is not that big a deal. Replace them with LSU, Arkansas, Bama, etc.

How much damage is OU playing follow the leader doing to our long-term reputation and how will that start to be reflected in our recruiting? The thing that frustrates me the most is OU is a greater traditional power than Texas. Why does the administration act as if the opposite’s true? If the chance to go to the SEC with A&M comes again, take it.

Just be cool.

I honestly don’t see Texas spitting in everyone’s faces with this. They’re just doing what they’ve always done, which is just sitting around being bigger than everyone else. That doesn’t mean their spitting in everyone’s face. I’ll give you that Texans generally, and Texas fans in particular, seem to be wholly incapable of grasping the concept that bigger doesn’t necessarily equal better, and they tend to go around being obnoxiously sure of their own superiority because there’s no doubt that Texas, as an institution, is bigger than anyone else. But it’s that inability to grasp the subtle nuance between bigger and better that gives rise to one of life’s greatest joys, namely, seeing that strained look on a Texas fan’s face when she’s trying to figure out why Texas isn’t always winning when it’s patently obvious that they’re always bigger. We get to watch them unwittingly embarrass themselves as they explain to us how every loss is a matter of some extenuating circumstance (read: excuse, or more appropriately Texcuse), because obviously Texas was the bigger team, so obviously they should have won. We get to watch them talk about how great they are even as they claim conference titles with an asterisk, as they beg people to recognize how much bigger they are and vote them into the Rose Bowl games they otherwise haven’t earned, as they beg and plead with former players to accept awards they didn’t win because “it would be good for the program,” as they insist that Oklahoma gets an unfair advantage by always sitting around the tunnel at Cotton Bowl, as they insist that little drapes must be put up along the tunnel because of all horrible things that have happened to their players walking through that tunnel over the course of the last 80 drape-free years. We get to watch them do all of these unseemly and embarrassing things, and we get the extra joy of watching them do it with a straight face. They do all of those things while honestly thinking “damnit we’re better than everyone.” Even now we got to watch their coaching staff completely implode, and all they can say is man Mack is making great hires. [Sigh] It brings joy to my heart just to type this.

Sure, the TV network is the latest and greatest statement to the world that “We’re Texas, and we’re bigger than you.” But that’s always been true and it always will be true. It’s a large warm-weather state with deep-water ports, an international border, lots of natural resources, and tons and tons of people. It should be really big. And sure Texas doesn’t care about anyone else, but Oklahoma didn’t stay in the BigXII because it cares about Texas. It cares about Oklahoma, and the fact of the matter is that Oklahoma is better off in the BigXII. If Texas gets the rights to its non-conference games, then Oklahoma and A&M are going to get the rights to their non-conference games too, and guess what. That means Oklahoma will make more money and exert more control than it would in any other conference. Those 3 schools are bringing more to the table than they are getting back. It’s the other 7 schools that will suffer what they must. Oklahoma isn’t going to make as much as Texas is on it’s non-conference rights, but it’s still going to make a lot more than it would if it had to share its non-conference revenue. And Oklahoma gets to reap all of these rewards while Texas does all of the pushing people around.

If Oklahoma’s administrators are doing anything wrong, it’s trying to create their own network. Oklahoma doesn’t need one. No one will want to watch it and 10 years from now, no one will being paying for cable TV. Having the rights to the non-conference games would be nice, but Oklahoma doesn’t need a TV network. If they want to do anything they should work on distributing video over the internet in a way that gives them complete control. They won’t need a distribution partner and all of the ad revenue can go straight to the school with much less overhead than building a TV network.

Look, I understand that Nebraska would love for everyone to think they left the BigXII because they weren’t going to let Texas push them around, but the truth is Texas was never pushing them around. I don’t know why anyone would care where the conference offices were. Oklahoma wanted the Championship Game to be in Dallas too. I don’t know what Oklahoma’s stance on partial-qualifiers was, but it wasn’t horrible to limit them. OU-Nebraska wasn’t an every year cross divisional game because Oklahoma didn’t want it, and they didn’t want it because It wouldn’t work. Oklahoma would have had to play Texas and Nebraska every single year, while Texas and Nebraska would only play each other half the time. It would’ve put Oklahoma at a huge disadvantage in winning the conference in 2 out of every 4 years.

Nebraska would love for everyone to believe they left because they weren’t going to take it any more, and maybe they even believe that themselves. I know the fans think that, but damnit guys a lot of their fans are crazy. You can think OSU sucks and their fans are stupid all you want, but you have to acknowledge that sharing the state with another school forces you to have a sense of perspective about how good you really are. In Oklahoma the papers write about both schools and OSU doesn’t particularly like how its always measured against Oklahoma, but in Nebraska all the papers write about is Nebraska, and at times they lose all sense of perspective.

The truth is that Nebraska and Colorado left because they saw the writing on the wall. Colorado wouldn’t even deny that they saw it. The South was flirting with the Pac-10, and half the South schools had invitations to two of the 3 conferences that are assured of existence after the move to 16-team conferences (and really, if OU, Texas, and A&M had all gone to the SEC, then OSU was probably getting the 16th invite). The reality is that those 3 schools can do whatever they want and the coming change in the college football landscape is not a threat to them. But that wasn’t true for Nebraska. Nebraska isn’t valuable enough to be worth it to the SEC or the Pac-10 to have some satellite member in the middle of the country. When things fall apart and the 16-team conferences form, Nebraska needs to be in the BigTen or they risk being stuck in the Mountain West. Their administrators were smart enough not to let that happen. When the BigXII asked Nebraska to pledge its loyalty, they couldn’t afford to do it. If they stuck with the BigXII and the BigTen went to 16 teams without them, there was no one saving a seat for them whenever the South finally goes to a 16-team league. They needed to get their seat at one of the Big-Boys’ tables now, and they smartly did it.

Oklahoma and A&M responded in completely different ways, and Oklahoma is the one that kept its cool. A&M threw a fit. They didn’t want to go the Pac-10 because Texas told them they should go there. A&M’s fans displayed an even bigger inferiority-complex than you guys are with this post. Between the two moves, the Pac-10 was clearly the better move, but A&M wouldn’t hear it. But the best move was staying put. If you stay put, you’re going to get to eat a lot more of what you kill because the weaker schools aren’t going to be in a position to demand anything from you. They’ll take what you give them and like it because otherwise they’re all going to be stuck in the Mountain West.

Oklahoma doesn’t need to do anything. They need to just be cool and let the money roll in while they wait for the world to turn. When it does, they’ll make their move. But for now it’s better for Oklahoma to get the same deal Texas gets on a smaller scale than anything that any other conference can give them. That’s definitely the case as long as it looks like Oklahoma is going to win the conference 3 out of every 4 years. I mean come on guys. Oklahoma is getting a pretty sweet deal in the new BigXII, and Texas is the jerk everyone loves to hate. (The team that looks screwed is Texas Tech. They had an invitation and now it looks like Utah is drinking their milkshake.)

I could write even more words than I’ve written here about the things that Texas does that are objectively repulsive, but having the TV network isn’t really one of them. The TV network just means they’re bigger than everyone else, and we already knew that. This is nothing new. This changes nothing. Maybe for lacrosse or baseball, but for football this changes nothing.

So, please. Just be cool. If you plead with the administration to do anything, plead with them to not start a TV network, because Oklahoma doesn’t need it. When things went down over the summer, Oklahoma was the only guy in the room that acted like he didn’t need to prove his dick was the biggest, and I think that’s a good thing. When Oklahoma does what Texas does, it’s not because they care about Texas. It’s because it’s better for Oklahoma. And it’s better for Oklahoma for the same reasons it’s better for Texas. Oklahoma just isn’t as big as Texas is and consequentially the dollars aren’t as big either. But surely we all knew that Texas was bigger.

So, just be cool, and watch Texas try to figure out why it doesn’t win all the time even though they’re so flippin’ big that Disney just paid $300m for the privilege of setting up shop Austin. Seriously, how awesome would it have been to watch a TXPN broadcast after a 73-14 beat down? Or after Texas lost 3 home games in a month to UCLA, Iowa State and Baylor? This just means that their swim team is going to be awesome, and they’ll have their own special channel to embarrass themselves on 24-7. So, please, just be cool, and don’t go writing anymore drivel. It’s undignified.