BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

Let's be clear about what the motivation should be in adding Texas schools to a BCS league right now: It should be to make your conference the one Texans associate their state to. If you are able to get Texas, Tech, OSU and OU into the Pac-16, then most Texans would think of their state as a Pac-16 state. A&M would be an outlier in the SEC. Right now, A&M is going to be an outlier in a Big 12 state. By no means does A&M joining the SEC make Texas an SEC state, not so long as Texas is in a viable Big 12 that also includes Tech and Baylor along with OU and OSU.

So if I'm the SEC, I'm not only looking to add teams from that area, I'm looking at destroying the Big 12 as a viable conference and making Texans think of their state as an SEC state, thus making Texas a very high-profile outlier, sort of like Notre Dame, which is lost in Big 10 country right now, in my opinion.

 

How much is OU's presence in Texas tied to playing there multiple times a year? In other words, it's in a division that's 2/3 Texas schools. They are tied to Texas in that way (of course, that wasn't true during the Big 8 era, but that was a different era).

 

Texas will probably always be associated with whatever conference UT is in. I think the best you can do is muddy the waters to the point where the state doesn't have a signature conference, but I don't know how you do that without Texas. I don't think even adding Texas Tech, Baylor and TCU would be enough.

 

But if the Pac-12 rejects the Longhorn network, wouldn't Texas have no choice but to be independent?

 

OU is two hours from the Texas border. They probably have tons of alumni in Dallas and to lesser degrees Houston and San Antonio. Playing Texas and A&M every year certainly helps, but they're big enough to have a presence in that state even if they aren't there three times a season.

 

They could conceivably go to the Big East as a non-football member, and the ACC might find them more attractive than Rutgers if they go to 16 teams. Even so, the best you can do is make Texas a battleground state. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to make Texas an SEC/Big Ten/ACC/Pac-1? state without UT involved.

 

The Pac ? is crazy if it does not make consessions to get UT, OU, OSU and (Tech, Baylor, Rice, SMU, Houston, just pick one) into the fold.

Houston, Dallas, Austin, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, San Diego, LA, San Fran, Seattle, Portland...

That is a pretty nice list, and they will be right there with the SEC for best athletic conference in the nation.

 

But does the addition of four teams two time zones away from the bulk of the rest of your conference bring in enough additional revenue to offset the cost of flying non-rev teams to Austin, Lubbock, Stillwater & Norman?

 

I never thought Lubbock was that bad, but obviously I'm in the minority.

 

And a good live music scene ... and a hard Amarillo highway!

 

To be the 1A football conference in America, I would pay the price.

 

TCU would tap into the casual Metroplex market IF you had Arkansas, Auburn and Bama in every year. Hell even when TCU sucked, they'd fill Amon Carter when A&M or Arkansas visited because those teams would gobble up the tickets. Same damn thing that happens when UT plays at Vandy or Bama plays at Vandy.