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PandaPipe

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  1. 1 hour ago, Vertigo said:

    Zero percent chance Arch will be a dud. Peyton beat guys with his mind, Eli beat guys with his mind, Arch will likely do the same with a dose of athleticism that the other two didn't have. He already has a pro bowler's study habits, and quite frankly that puts him in the top 1% of college QBs by itself. If he implodes it won't be because he isn't seeing the game. It would likely involve a dead hooker in the trunk and a mountain of tony montana coke in the backseat during a traffic stop for running over an old woman in a wheelchair. 

    327a44e5-3c8e-4d6a-92c6-eae341db7b8d_text.gif.20902a869c03e2e9e3dcf59a81a8ba01.gif

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  2. https://amazingribs.com/ is a great resource with some questionable web design.

    Chicken, sausage, and pork butts are easier than brisket or ribs, so I recommend starting there for the first couple of cooks. It's really hard to mess up a pork butt for pulled pork. You'll need a thermometer with multiple probes, some for ambient smoker temps, others for meat. Try out different woods to see which you like best. If you're in Texas, post oak, hickory, and mesquite will be the most available (maybe pecan too?). I live in the PNW so I also like to toss in a little apple or cherry wood for fun since I can find them for relatively cheaper. Given the time and effort it takes to run an offset smoker I like to make a lot of extra meat in each cook, then vacuum seal and freeze the leftovers.

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  3. 3 minutes ago, DFW Horn said:

    This article is behind The Athletic's paywall. A little help?

    Quote

    Staples: The realignment battle for No. 1 — and for No. 3 — comes down to TV eyeballs

    ARLINGTON, TX - DECEMBER 29: Clemson Tigers wide receiver Justyn Ross (8) catches a pass along the sidelines and stiff arms Notre Dame Fighting Irish safety Jalen Elliott (21) during the CFP Semifinal Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic game between the Clemson Tigers and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on December 29, 2018 at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Matthew Pearce/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
    By Andy Staples
    6h ago

    155


    When schools begin jumping from one conference to another, the same argument always breaks out. Fans of a school wishing to move to a more prestigious league will tout the audience their school brings. Fans hoping their league can stay together will point to the audience their league has.

    These arguments tend to take place with no factual basis. Meanwhile, schools and conferences hire television consultants who keep granular, to-the-minute data about who is watching and for how long. Because while there are a few reasons to add a school to a league — adding population to the conference footprint to make more money off cable subscribers or adding academically prestigious universities that burnish a league’s reputation — the most important factor remains eyeballs. Do people want to watch Team X enough to make adding Team X worthwhile?

    As the Pac-12 tries to deal with the fallout of losing UCLA and USC to the Big Ten and the Big 12 explores a raid on the Pac-12, audience data can be quite instructive. It also helps explain the angst in the ACC, where several programs at the top of the league’s Q score ratings should be making huge money but are tethered to a deal that pays them less than they’re worth and lasts until 2036. Plus, TV ratings make abundantly clear why Notre Dame holds all the cards in this round of realignment and why the Fighting Irish can go as fast or slow as they wish evaluating the landscape to decide whether they need to join a conference in football.

    Last year, we examined the Four Million Club. Those are the games that truly move the needle for television programmers. Much of the action of realignment has been to consolidate the schools that create those games. At this point, the Big Ten and SEC have scooped up most of them.

    So how do we evaluate the rest? Some, like Oregon, Washington, Clemson and Florida State, believe they deserve inclusion in one of the two mega-conferences. Others either are trying to figure out what to do next or might be expansion targets for the leagues operating a notch below the mega-conferences. The Big Ten and SEC have only so much room, so the race to be conference No. 3 in terms of revenue will get downright Darwinian. The remaining Pac-12 schools and the Big 12 schools — with new media rights deals about to be negotiated — all are trying to determine how the most profitable arrangement might look, and ACC leaders hope their conference’s grant of rights agreement keeps the most desirable members from leaving.

    It would be easy to calculate a median or average TV audience number for the schools in question, but it might not be as instructive. Part of the problem with measuring television audience for games is not knowing how many people tuned in to watch which team. With Oklahoma and Texas still in the Big 12 and USC and UCLA still in the Pac-12, how do we use the data from those games? It’s probably best to throw them out and measure the schools based on who wants to see them when they aren’t playing a team either in or headed to the Big Ten or SEC. So that’s what I did. I took the ratings spreadsheet I made last year* — which includes data from 2015-19 — and added 2021 data. I left out 2020 because the unevenness of the pandemic year skewed the numbers.

    *This data comes courtesy of the excellent Sports Media Watch, where Jon Lewis faithfully compiles ratings every week of the season.

    I then examined the games between teams that aren’t in or headed to the Big Ten or SEC (and aren’t Notre Dame) when they played other teams that aren’t in or headed to the Big Ten or SEC (and aren’t Notre Dame). Instead of four million, I set the cutline at one million. We still have the same issue of trying to decipher which school people tuned in to watch, but if a team that cracked a million at least 20 times in six seasons did it against a team that cracked a million twice in six seasons, it’s pretty easy to answer that question. It’s also pretty easy to imagine that if the team that cracked a million at least 20 times played in a league with a bunch of schools that regularly crack three or four million viewers, even more people would watch.

    From 2015-19 and in 2021 there were 914 rated regular-season (no conference title games) televised games not involving Notre Dame or anyone who will be in the Big Ten or SEC.

    • 284 of those games drew more than a million viewers. (By contrast, 732 of 951 games involving the Big Ten, SEC and/or Notre Dame drew more than one million viewers.)

    • 117 games drew more than two million viewers.

    • 47 games drew more than three million viewers.

    • 27 games drew more than four million viewers.

    • 14 games drew more than five million viewers.

    • Of those, six were the Army-Navy game.

    There probably is another conversation to be had about the service academies, but that particular game is unique in that it has a rich history and usually is the only college football game on its weekend. For realignment purposes, the games that take place on standard in-season dates are the ones that draw the most attention.

    So which teams cracked a million the most? Two ACC teams, followed by two Pac-12 schools.

    GAMES TEAMS
    34
    Clemson
    31
    Florida State
    28
    Washington
    26
    Oregon
    22
    Miami
    21
    Washington State
    19
    Oklahoma State, Utah
    18
    Louisville, Stanford
    16
    North Carolina
    15
    Baylor, Colorado, Virginia Tech
    14
    TCU, West Virginia
    13
    Arizona State, Boise State
    12
    BYU, Cal, Pittsburgh
    11
    Cincinnati, NC State
    10
    Syracuse
    9
    Texas Tech, UCF, Virginia
    8
    Houston, USF, Wake Forest
    7
    Army, Boston College, Iowa State, Navy
    6
    Arizona, Georgia Tech, Memphis
    5
    Duke
    4
    Kansas State, SMU, Temple
    3
    Oregon State
    2
    Air Force, Colorado State, Kansas, Marshall, Tulsa, UConn, Utah State
    1
    1: Alcorn State, Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, FAU, Kent State, N.C. Central, Rice, San Diego State, Nevada, Tulane

     

    Why do Clemson and Florida State fans complain that they belong in the SEC? Because they rate like SEC teams. It should be noted that Florida State hasn’t been good for most of the period included, and the Seminoles still keep drawing viewers. Clemson had the most-watched single game in this group when Deshaun Watson and the Tigers dueled with Lamar Jackson and Louisville in 2016 (9.3 million viewers), and the Tigers were the most consistent at drawing viewers. Games on the ACC, Pac-12 and SEC networks aren’t rated, so Clemson’s ACC Network games aren’t included, but if we bring back all the Tigers’ opponents — which include Notre Dame and several SEC programs — the Tigers had a median audience of 2.6 million viewers.

    This was far and away the best of the group. In fact, Clemson comes close to Notre Dame, which had a median audience of 2.9 million during the six-season stretch. To understand why everyone wants the Fighting Irish, consider this. In 68 rated games during those six seasons, Notre Dame drew at least one million viewers 67 times. Only the 2017 game against Miami (Ohio) on NBC Sports Network came up short (798,000 viewers). Meanwhile, Notre Dame broke two million viewers 54 times, broke three million 32 times and broke five million 15 times.

    Clemson doesn’t have the alumni spread or the brand awareness of Notre Dame, but it’s clear people want to watch the Tigers play. Atlantic Division (RIP) rival Florida State drew a median audience of 1.9 million in 49 rated games over the same period. The only other schools in that neighborhood were Oregon (1.9 million), Washington (1.6 million) and Louisville (1.6 million).

    Do the Cardinals surprise you there? They surprised me as well. I wondered if they’d gotten a serious lift because of the two seasons with 2016 Heisman Trophy winner Jackson as the primary starting QB (2016 and 2017), but the median audience in those years was only 200,000 viewers above the median for the entire sample.

    Conversations with people in the SEC suggest that in addition to the obvious reasons for wanting Clemson and Florida State, North Carolina and Virginia are highly coveted. The Tar Heels (1.2 million in 24 rated games) and Cavaliers (1.4 million in 24 rated games) don’t bring the same raw audience, but a different kind of math could be drawing the eye of SEC leaders. Clemson, Florida State, Louisville and Miami (1.4 million in 47 rated games) are all in states that already are in the SEC footprint. Within the footprint, the SEC Network commands a subscriber fee of about $1.40 a month. Outside the footprint, the fee is much lower. North Carolina and Virginia are the two largest states that include neither a Big Ten nor an SEC school. Assuming the fee rises by about $1 a month for territory added to the footprint, it makes sense for the SEC — or the Big Ten, for that matter — to want to plant a flag in those two states. That’s a lot of new money from millions of cable, satellite and streaming bundle subscribers.

    The other obvious question is “Why doesn’t one league take North Carolina and Virginia and one take NC State and Virginia Tech?” In this sample, the two flagships drew larger audiences. In 26 rated games, NC State drew a median of 1.1 million viewers. In 41 rated games, Virginia Tech drew a median audience of 968,000.

    That cable subscriber math also helps explain why the Pac-12 and ACC would discuss an arrangement that would put Pac-12 games on the ACC’s channel. That would fuel better distribution on the West Coast and turn out-of-footprint subscribers into in-footprint subscribers. The only question is how the leagues would split the new money. It hardly seems worth it for ACC members to give up the exclusivity of their own network if they don’t get most of the spoils. Meanwhile, Pac-12 members might be just as disappointed as they were with the money they currently receive (or don’t) from the Pac-12 Network if they don’t see much revenue from the deal.

    The ratings offer a fascinating window into the dynamics at play in the Big 12 and Pac-12. According to the audience numbers, Oregon and Washington are the two most bankable brands among those two leagues. Our list of one-million-viewer games shows a surprising affinity for Washington State (21 games — one behind Miami), but otherwise, there really isn’t much difference between the group of schools remaining in the Pac-12 and the group of schools that will make up the Big 12 after Oklahoma and Texas leave.

    So if the Big Ten decided it wanted to go west again and snag Oregon and Washington, the Big 12 would be in prime position to scoop up the best that remains of the Pac-12. But even if the Big Ten decides to hold at 16 for now, the Big 12 still could use this information to its advantage. It could show Oregon and Washington that schools such as Baylor, BYU, Cincinnati, Oklahoma State and TCU produce comparable or better numbers than the group Oregon and Washington would have to prop up in the Pac-12. Or it could make that same pitch to Colorado and Utah, attacking the middle of the Pac-12 — from a brand standpoint — with the hope that losing it would force the Ducks and Huskies to make a move. And while few of the projections have suggested Washington State as a target, perhaps the Cougars should be. They seem to play games viewers find interesting. Their median audience in 39 rated games was 1.5 million viewers. Take away six rated games against USC and UCLA, and the Cougars’ median audience remains 1.5 million viewers.

    These numbers will be crunched and chewed upon throughout the next few months as schools and leagues try to decide their next steps. If their previous moves are any indication, the Big Ten and SEC ultimately will try to take what’s left at the top of the other leagues in order to further cement their dominance. But the race to be No. 3 — and possibly to stay alive — likely will come down to eyeballs earned.

     

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  4. What the Big Ten adding USC and UCLA would mean for the SEC - The Athletic

     

    Quote

    What the Big Ten adding USC and UCLA would mean for the SEC

    INDIANAPOLIS, IN - JANUARY 10: The Alabama Crimson Tide take on the Georgia Bulldogs during the College Football Playoff Championship held at Lucas Oil Stadium on January 10, 2022 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Jamie Schwaberow/Getty Images)
    By The Athletic College Football Staff
    4h ago

    64


    — Reporting by Seth Emerson, Aaron Suttles and G. Allan Taylor

    Late last year, a few months after the SEC gobbled up Texas and Oklahoma, commissioner Greg Sankey was asked if he was to blame for realignment.

    “No,” Sankey said, grinning. “Let’s go back over the last 20 or 30 years — a lot of decisions have been made, with a lot of movement. That’s historic reality, that’s current reality and likely going to be future reality.”

    Bingo. And if anything, the bombshell news Thursday that the Big Ten is gobbling up USC and UCLA shows that Sankey and the SEC were not to blame. They’re vindicated because in college athletics nobody is in charge, and conference realignment, it appears, was always destined to be a messy but lucrative dash toward super-conferences.

    And the SEC will be one of them.

    What is the reaction in SEC territory?

    People in the SEC footprint were as surprised as anybody, at least that this is happening now. Two well-connected sources in the SEC told The Athletic they hadn’t heard anything until early Thursday, a few hours before the story broke. Paul Finebaum, the pre-eminent voice on the SEC Network, echoed that.

    “It’s a jaw-dropping move,” Finebaum said. “Compliments to Kevin Warren for completely faking out his colleagues at the ACC and Pac-12 with this ridiculous contraption called The Alliance. While they were celebrating such future matchups like Washington State-Georgia Tech and Boston College-Cal, the Big Ten was plotting the biggest move in college football since Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC. While it moves the Big Ten closer to the SEC, it pushes the ACC closer to irrelevance.

    “If you are Dabo Swinney, you are screaming at your athletic director at Clemson to get you to the SEC, regardless of the cost.”

    At least one SEC administrator called the USC/UCLA move “predictable” based upon the Power 5 merging into a Power 2.

    “The SEC and Big Ten have separated from all the other conferences,” the source said. “The schools with strong brands who are outside those two leagues will be seeking entry.”

    So will the SEC go after ACC schools?

    Maybe eventually, but it’s not as easy as just adding them. The ACC has a grant of rights deal with each school through 2036 — the same reason Oklahoma and Texas have to wait until 2025 to leave the Big 12.

    Still, if this is all accelerating the move to super-conferences, Sankey will not be standing pat, especially if the ACC truly is vulnerable. And it might be if the money ACC schools would have to forfeit can be offset by the money they would get by landing in the Big Ten or SEC.

    On paper, the ACC has schools that could be divided into like-minded conferences: The Big Ten could take North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, Syracuse, Boston College and Pittsburgh. The SEC would most value Clemson, Virginia Tech, Florida State and Miami, with NC State, Georgia Tech and Wake Forest as second-tier options. (Where would that leave Louisville? Maybe to join whatever is left of the Big 12?)

    SEC presidents probably would prefer to go after North Carolina and Duke, for reasons of academic prestige. It might not seem like the best fit, but at this point, it’s all about the money.

    This is all speculation, of course, until getting a school out of the ACC appears realistic. Those conversations are certainly happening now but probably more in a reactionary way: Where is this going and what should we do? Sankey and the SEC have shown they will act more deliberately, so don’t expect any SEC expansion news conferences tomorrow.

    At minimum, Sankey and the SEC are well positioned, having been the first to get to 16 teams. They also did it in a way that makes more geographic sense: Every state in the conference’s footprint touches at least one other SEC school.

    Whereas the Big 12 was viewed as the most unstable conference for the past decade, the ACC and soon-to-be Pac-10 now share that distinction. It’s feasible that the Big 12 might have enough leverage to draw Utah and an ACC member. Or will the ACC convince the Big 12’s easternmost schools to join the pack?

    GettyImages-1230220204-scaled.jpg
     
    The SEC will move to 16 teams when Oklahoma and Texas join the conference. (David J. Griffin / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

    Could the SEC go after any non-ACC schools?

    If it wanted anybody else from the Big 12, it could have done so at the time. Of course, the calculus might change now if the idea is to go to 20-plus teams. Oklahoma State could reunite with Oklahoma. Kansas could be attractive for basketball, although basketball hasn’t moved the needle in realignment and Jayhawks football is so laughable that it couldn’t win a Group of 5 conference. Maybe you think about West Virginia, which fits the SEC culture, draws perennially strong football attendance and has notable alumni pockets in Atlanta and Charlotte. Cincinnati has won consistently during the past three decades and emerged as a national power under Luke Fickell. Might the SEC see value to encroach into Ohio?

    There’s also the Pac-12, where Arizona and Arizona State are at least a short plane flight from the Texas schools. Given the slate of bowl games staged around the growing Phoenix metropolitan area, it feels like college football territory.

    Still, the additions that make the most sense are from the ACC.

    What else does this say about the SEC?

    It vindicates Sankey for jumping first and getting the right schools for his conference. Maybe super-conferences are bad for college sports, but it appears they were inevitable. (When the Oklahoma-Texas news broke in 2021, two Power 5 athletic directors outside the SEC told The Athletic they foresaw Sankey trying to amass a 20- to 24-team league.)

    Speaking to media members in May, Sankey made specific mention of a member colleague (the Big Ten) renegotiating its media rights deal. That wasn’t by accident. The SEC adding Texas and Oklahoma certainly increased its value in terms of future television deals or set the basis for renegotiating. If the future is indeed super-conferences of as many as 20 members, those back-room, hushed conversations are likely being had sooner rather than later.

    “People who are able to make decisions, like-minded universities, like-minded athletics programs coming together, I think has proven to be healthy over time,” Sankey said. “There are a number of factors that are going to drive membership transition — geography, so (Texas and Oklahoma are) contiguous states. The media opportunities which bring, I think, arguably the best.

    “There’s a set of shifts. What’s fascinating is there’s all these FCS and smaller Division I conference shifts that outnumber anything we’ve done at the FBS level, but they don’t really drive attention. And that has nothing to do with Texas and Oklahoma. The Big 12’s expansion and then the American expanding and some shifts around Conference USA and the Sun Belt — one can see a domino effect there. But I think that can work really well for us. I think that’s a reality of college sports over time. And I certainly think it can be helpful. You’re also assuming people are just going to stay (in their current conference if they didn’t join the SEC).”

    Could this speed up Oklahoma and Texas joining the SEC?

    There was already some buzz at SEC meetings last month that the Sooners and Longhorns could move up their arrival to 2024, coinciding with the SEC’s new Disney broadcast deal. The thinking was that if the SEC could renegotiate for more money, because that Disney deal was struck pre-expansion, it could make it worth Texas’ and Oklahoma’s while to pay an early exit fee.

    The problem with that is the Big 12’s divorce fee is so high — possibly north of $80 million per school — that it might take ESPN stepping in as a broker to make it worth it for everyone involved, including the Big 12. And the motivation for doing so could be throttled up now if the Big Ten is adding its two new teams in 2024.

    But again, it would have to make financial sense for the Big 12, Texas and Oklahoma to negotiate an early exit. And if past realignments serve as precedent, schools on the move don’t linger in their old leagues for very long. Texas and OU are already recruiting on the strength of joining the SEC, so it’s hard to envision them staying in the Big 12 for four more seasons.

    Does this affect College Football Playoff expansion?

    It has to. There’s almost no way it doesn’t. It certainly shifts the focus on the number of guaranteed at-large bids in any expansion talks to a place in which the SEC is much more agreeable. Another conference beefing up its membership, as the Big Ten is doing, will garner another ally for the SEC in terms of any expansion talks guaranteeing more at-large bids.

    The SEC is never going to cede fewer at-larges over automatic bids for conference champions when other conferences don’t have the number of teams capable of making the CFP. One would think this move by the Big Ten aligns their thinking in that regard.

    With USC and UCLA departing, the soon-to-be Pac-10 has no leverage to demand an automatic qualifier’s spot. Backfilling with Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State, Nevada, Utah State, Fresno State or Hawaii doesn’t remedy that. So Sankey is primed to get his wish: a 12-team field in which the SEC can annually expect four or five teams to be invited.

     

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  5. 52 minutes ago, Tex-19 said:
    Quote

    After another eventful week of fallout, what comes next for the Big 12?

    Texas and Oklahoma are joining the SEC, either in 2025 or perhaps much sooner. The Big 12’s commissioner is exploring whether aligning with the Pac-12 could help save the conference. The remaining Texas schools and their politicians are banding together.

    Here’s what we know and what we’re hearing.

    Bowlsby meets Kliavkoff

    Bob Bowlsby and George Kliavkoff don’t really know each other well, or at least didn’t before last week. That’s probably an important place to start in sizing up their meeting last Tuesday to discuss whether the Big 12 and Pac-12 might benefit from a strategic partnership.

    There was no expectation going into their summit that, at a time when trust is at a premium, they would jump right ahead to negotiating a deal of some kind. Among Power 5 commissioners, there will surely be many more meetings like this one in the months ahead.

    But on the Big 12 side, sources say Bowlsby came back with a sense of cautious optimism and assured the meeting went well. The two commissioners did talk about the concepts of a scheduling alliance, merger and other potentially creative solutions for working together as expected, though neither side offered specifics to The Athletic. Their discussion was characterized as more introductory and exploratory in nature and less about sorting through the details of each potential plan.

    Pac-12 sources were quick to frame the Bowlsby meeting as a very preliminary, get-to-know-you type of visit. But for their conference, it made sense to take the meeting. Sources believe they’re in a good position, no moves are imminent and they need not rush to make any. Like Bowlsby, Kliavkoff is serious about putting all his options on the table and seeing what fits best for his membership and the future of the Pac-12.

    Closing the revenue gap relative to the SEC and the Big Ten is important in the long run, no question. But the Pac-12 also needs to make sure USC stays satisfied, sources said, so that the conference doesn’t become at risk of losing its anchor the way the Big 12 just did.

    There’s at least some thinking among decision-makers in the Pac-12 that they don’t need to expand and could even be better served trying to form a strategic alliance with the Big Ten and ACC. It’s unclear what form that sort of arrangement would take, but this is the kind of big-picture thinking that is suddenly required in light of the SEC’s big move.

    Kliavkoff has received plenty of praise early in his tenure for being exactly the kind of aggressive, dynamic, forward-thinking leader the Pac-12 needs in these unpredictable times. It’ll be fascinating to see what path he prefers for this league to solve its problems, how he galvanizes support and how he makes use of his considerable leverage.

    Ultimately, the financial implications of each choice are going to drive the outcome, and those are largely unknown right now. If aligning with the Big 12 does end up gaining traction, does the Pac-12 really want to share revenue with that many schools? Does growing the conference beyond its current footprint generate meaningful value? The Pac-12 is certainly not alone in pondering those questions as well as what choices their TV partners would make worthwhile.

    “I think this fall, the other leagues are going to be having many more in-depth conversations,” one Big 12 AD said. “The fall meetings will start shedding some light on what different conferences want to do.”

    As many sources have stressed, it would be naïve to believe Texas, Oklahoma and the SEC only spent a couple of months putting their plan together. The Big 12 and Pac-12 have an opportunity to make massively important decisions that potentially redefine their conferences. These deals don’t happen quickly. Patience is required, as hard as that will be in the Big 12.

    “I do think a lot of this information is going to get a little quiet, which will put a lot of people in a very anxious spot, especially our boards and fan bases,” the Big 12 AD said. “Once football starts, I just don’t think this is like the other realignments where it’s going to move fast. And that’s going to get people very, very anxious.

    “That’s probably what Oklahoma and Texas want. They want people to get anxious and start doing some crazy things, because that’s more advantageous to them. I don’t think they want to stay in this marriage until 2025. If that’s what it’s going to take, I think it’s up to the eight remaining to play that long game. We’re in a marathon right now, not a sprint.”

    The Texas trio

    One unsurprising dynamic has emerged from Texas’ defection: The leaders at Baylor, TCU and Texas Tech are talking on a daily basis and working closely together to figure out what’s next.

    That unity was easy to see last Monday in Austin at the Texas Senate committee meeting when the presidents/chancellors and athletic directors of the three schools appeared to explain their current predicament and why they’ll take all the help they can get to protect their future. The Longhorns’ betrayal has clearly brought them together.

    “I do know this: the other two institutions in this room — TCU and Texas Tech — are very, very important to Baylor,” Baylor AD Mack Rhoades told the committee. “We need to make sure, for the state of Texas, that this is not a demotion for those three schools. Because that’s what it feels like right now.”

    These schools are looking out for each other and trying to be good partners to their fellow remaining conference members. But they’re also communicating frequently with Oklahoma State, a source said, which is not surprising but does lead to an interesting question.

    What if the Pac-12 decides it’s better off pursuing a deal with these Big 12 schools?

    Despite Kliavkoff’s willingness to meet with Bowlsby, the possibility of the Pac-12 preferring to add two or four of these Big 12 members can’t totally be ruled out. There’s a sense of optimism among these schools, sources say, that a spot in the Pac-12 could eventually be on the table.

    If its new commissioner is indeed determined to explore all possible options, it would make sense for the Pac-12 to look into what tangible value it could gain by planting its flag in the state of Texas with some combination of TCU, Texas Tech and Baylor. Oklahoma State would still be a logical fit in that bundle, given its 90-38 record in football over the past decade, 12th-best in the FBS.

    No one school besides Texas can give the Pac-12 a meaningful presence in that market. But three would help.

    Although that idea might still be a tough sell for Pac-12 presidents, there’s a case to be made that they need to take this opportunity seriously and have a healthy fear of the eat-or-be-eaten nature of realignment.

    The Pac-12’s intended timetable, if it does decide to be proactive and add members, would be a key issue. So would the state of the Big 12 and its grant-of-rights if defections occur.

    If the Pac-12 goes in this direction but ultimately only wishes to invite two schools, the collaboration between these Texas schools might quickly fall apart. They don’t have the kind of leverage to say, for example, that they would refuse to leave Baylor behind if the Bears’ relevance in football and basketball is outweighed by a hesitancy about inviting the private Baptist university.

    As one source put it, “We’re gonna do everything we can to help each other until we can’t.”

    Hurt feelings

    It’s still hard to imagine how Texas and Oklahoma are going to keep living in the Big 12 for four more years. Their remaining stay in this conference, however long it lasts, is going to be remarkably uncomfortable.

    The tensions haven’t dissipated much. There’s still anger within the conference about how this all went down. Those two schools have done irreparable damage to so many long-standing and previously close relationships.

    “It’s difficult to be betrayed by people that you call friends,” Bowlsby said last month. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do this, and OU and Texas did it as deceptively as they possibly could.”

    Bowlsby long considered Texas AD Chris Del Conte and Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione to be two of his closest friends in the business. Their decision to bolt for the SEC without warning or explanation stung a lot of their peers within the conference. Full transparency can’t be expected given what they were planning, but leaders in the Big 12 felt they were owed a lot more than what they got: a no-show for the key July 22 meeting (citing “conflicts”) and a pointless July 25 videoconference with Bowlsby and the Big 12’s executive committee one day before Texas and Oklahoma sent their exit letter.

    Bowlsby says he didn’t know anything was amiss until the Houston Chronicle report emerged. He has pointed out it’s hard to ignore the added deception that, if not for their SEC plan leaking out, Texas and Oklahoma might still be participating in conference meetings to this day and collecting more proprietary information before announcing their departure plans.

    “There’s going to be some major damage to friendships, which is sad,” one source said.

    The Longhorns are used to being portrayed as the villain in this conference and have been for a long time. They’re not going to wince at any of this, as Texas president Jay Hartzell demonstrated last Monday. This is much more unfamiliar territory for Oklahoma, especially for their venerated longtime AD. Castiglione is as respected as it gets in his profession. One of his conference peers called the Sooners’ actions “really un-Joe-like.”

    “It’s the fact he didn’t even give a heads up to some of his closest friends in the conference,” the source said. “On that day, when they got a sense it was gonna break, at least call your friends that you’ve known forever and say so.”

    Whatever efforts Texas and Oklahoma make going forward to speed up their divorce from the Big 12 will take time. Bowlsby and his eight schools are, at the moment, definitely not inclined to settle and let them off the hook for less than what’s owed. The longer that process drags on, the weirder it’s going to get during this football season and beyond.

    “This isn’t gonna happen tomorrow,” one source said. “They’re gonna be in our league this year. They’re gonna go to meetings. And it’s gonna be uncomfortable.”

    They’ll have to find some way to work around this in the short term. When asked how that collaboration is going to work, with two members eyeing the exit, Bowlsby said that’ll depend on the topic in front of them.

    “There will be some meetings when we’ll have 10 members in the room,” he said, “and there will be some meetings where we’ll have eight in the room.”

    West Virginia’s point of view

    One obvious question mark in the concept of the Big 12 and Pac-12 possibly collaborating: What about West Virginia?

    For now, it’s quite simple: West Virginia isn’t in a position to say no. President Gordon Gee and athletic director Shane Lyons have been supportive of Bowlsby’s efforts to explore all possible options, sources say, because their top priority is maintaining Power 5 status and financial stability.

    While membership in the ACC would make a lot of sense, there are no guarantees the conference will finally extend the offer they’ve sought in past rounds of realignment. So they can’t say they’re not interested in whatever the Big 12 can put together, nor are they telling Bowlsby to leave them out of any potential plans.

    A merger with the Pac-12 wouldn’t be in West Virginia’s best interest. That goes without saying. But if these leagues did merge and maintained a clear east-west split, maybe West Virginia can benefit from that while having a relatively minimal role in crossover travel.

    A trip to Boulder (1,332 miles) or Salt Lake City (1,677) isn’t much farther away than the ones the Mountaineers have made to Waco (1,111), Austin (1,193) and Lubbock (1,280). Their football and basketball programs are inconvenienced least, too, since they charter flights. The Big 12 has done a good job in the past of trying to be fair and make travel less burdensome for West Virginia with its approach to scheduling.

    Being tied to the Pac-12 would come with challenges, no question. But they’d take those inconveniences over the massive financial hit of ending up in a league like the AAC. The same can be said if the Big 12 ends up pursuing expansion. While more geographically friendly members would be nice, the stance at West Virginia is they can make it work.

    West Virginia athletics was working on a $93 million budget for 2020-21 before the pandemic hit and ended up at nearly a $25 million deficit for the fiscal year. Lyons has said they’re maintaining 10 percent budget cuts across all sports going forward. They’re working hard to climb out of this like everyone else in their league. The financial challenges of the past year make clear what’s at stake if the Mountaineers aren’t in a Power 5 league whenever this phase of realignment wraps up.

    The recruiting problem 

    While there hasn’t been a slew of decommitments for the eight Big 12 members since this news hit, coaches and staffers say an uncertain future is immediately impacting their recruiting efforts. It’s way too easy right now for programs they’re competing with to sow doubt in recruits: Why go there? They’ll end up in a Group of 5 league.

    “It’s killing us right now,” one Big 12 coach said. “It’s absolutely, no doubt hurting us.”

    One would think this is more detrimental for the next recruiting class, since the grant of rights through the summer of 2025 is supposed to ensure recruits in the current 2022 cycle get to play at least three seasons in the Big 12. But it’s hard to have good answers for these prospects and their parents right now about what the future holds.

    This is hitting at an especially brutal time, too, with four of these eight programs recruiting quite well this summer. West Virginia has the No. 19 class on 247Sports, Iowa State is ranked No. 25, Baylor is No. 26 and Oklahoma State is currently No. 29 as of Sunday night.

    These programs already have a tough enough time building classes that consistently rank at a top-25 level. If you take the last five years of 247Sports class rankings and look at average finish over that span, Oklahoma’s recruiting ranks No. 6 nationally and Texas ranks No. 8. No other member of the Big 12 makes the top 30.

    Five-year average class ranking
    TEAM RANK BEST WORST
    team-logo-187-50x50.pngTCU
    31
    24 (2020)
    53 (2021)
    34
    30 (2021)
    40 (2020)
    39
    29 (2018)
    50 (2020)
    43
    35 (2018)
    57 (2017)
    51
    46 (2019)
    60 (2021)
    59
    52 (2020)
    66 (2018)
    62
    48 (2020)
    74 (2021)
    68
    56 (2020)
    71 (2017)

    How might that change once the two defecting members are gone? Recruiting at Oklahoma and Texas certainly won’t suffer from moving to the SEC. And recent history suggests we may end up living in a world where two-thirds of the blue-chip recruits in Texas are signing with SEC schools. The unknowable question is just how much the Big 12 is diminished in the eyes of recruits. Are these developmental programs going to have an even harder time convincing four- and five-star prospects to play in their league?

    Another inevitable knock that will come from rival recruiters: Look at the NFL Draft output. Oklahoma and Texas accounted for 41 of the Big 12’s 103 draft picks since 2017, even with Texas struggling to actually do a good job on the development front. The eight remaining Big 12 schools have combined to produce an average of 12 NFL Draft picks per year since 2017. That’s going to be tough to spin to recruits.

    NFL Draft picks by conference, 2017-2021
      2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 TOTAL PER SCHOOL
    SEC
    53
    53
    64
    63
    65
    298
    21.3
    ACC
    43
    45
    28
    27
    42
    185
    13.2
    Big Ten
    35
    33
    40
    48
    22
    178
    12.7
    Pac-12
    36
    30
    33
    32
    28
    159
    13.3
    Big 12
    14
    20
    26
    21
    22
    103
    10.3
    Big 12 (no OU/UT)
    9
    12
    16
    13
    12
    62
    7.8

    It’s easier said than done to preach patience. While football coaches don’t have much of a say in these matters, they’re already dealing with the consequences of all the short- and long-term uncertainty surrounding this league.

    “I’m not torn up about them leaving,” the coach said. “But it affects recruiting. That’s the biggest pain for me.”

     

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