Posted: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:13 PM - 9,262 Readers
By: Kirk Bohls
The rich didn't just get richer. The richer just got richest, if they weren't already.
The money-printing machine that is the Texas athletic department officially partnered with ESPN on Wednesday to announce to the world that if a Longhorns athlete is tackling, dribbling, hit-and-running, double-bogeying, rowing, backstroking, backhanding or pretty much doing anything remotely athletic, it will be on your television soon. All the softball and cross country in HD your little heart desires.
The announcement of the new 24-hour, every-day-of-the-year network that pays Texas $300 million over the next 20 years comes at a steep cost to the rest of the Big 12 Conference. The final score of Wednesday's historic, ground-breaking news that sets Texas further apart from the huddled masses was thus:
Texas 1, Big 12 0.
If the financial chasm between the Longhorns and the other remaining nine schools after Nebraska and Colorado wander off in May hasn't widened after this blockbuster move, then DeLoss Dodds isn't making plans on expanding Royal-Memorial Stadium to 200,000 and adding a gold-plated roof. That's probably a joke.
Hey, don't blame Texas for being Texas this time. It's looking after its own self interests. Can't fault Texas for maximizing its position in such a populous state with so many potential subscribers. Even Burke Magnus, ESPN's senior vice president for college sports programming, noted that and said, "I was glad to read Texas added five Congressional seats recently."
While this doesn't suggest Texas is seriously considering striking out on its own as an independent, that may only be semantics. Texas is already operating as an independent to a large degree.
Texas president William Powers Jr. and athletic directors Dodds and Chris Plonsky said all the right things during Wednesday's press conference, expressing their undying love and support for the Big 12, till death or Pac-12 entreaties do they part.
But considering Texas and five other Big 12 schools came within an eyeblink of aligning with the Pac-10 last summer, the rest of the conference schools have to be put on notice not to get too complacent.
What the new network will do is put pressure on coaches to produce big-time but also give them an unspeakable recruiting advantage. Starting this fall, a budding soccer star in San Diego or the next Canadian basketball forward at Findlay Prep can turn on the Texas network every day and watch the prettiest coeds in the nation and see that the sun shines 364 days in Austin. Oh, and rowing. Competing coaches are just going to love that.
And when Texas adds a slew of attractive high school football games like Lake Travis-Westlake and others on its network to feed the football-crazy subscribers, Bob Stoops and Mike Sherman will raise a ruckus over the Longhorns' unfair recruiting edge.
As beneficial as this will be for Mack Brown and Rick Barnes, it will be mega-appealing to all the nonrevenue sports at Texas. Now ESPN may not televise every hole of the Betsy Rawls tournament and every rowing stroke on Lady Bird Lake, but it will show enough to entice recruits to Austin.
Texas naturally scoffed all talk about it becoming an independent.
When I asked Dodds specifically about ever launching out solo, he said, "Absolutely no. We have no thoughts of moving and no thoughts of becoming an independent. We love our conference."
Until they don't.
How can the rest of the league totally entrust their future to a behemoth like Texas, which has surpassed Notre Dame as the reigning college athletic power everywhere but on the athletic field? This network wasn't the main reason Texas turned down the Pac-10, Dodds said, "but it was a reason."
No other school has a similar setup like Texas now has whereby every home sporting content not already promised to a national network can be shown on the Longhorn network. Most other schools with the will to dream of such a windfall like Ohio State or Florida have contractual tie-ins to broadcast and cable networks through their respective conference packages.
As Dodds said, Oklahoma was working hard on its own network, as was Nebraska before its Big 12 exit, and he'd even heard Missouri was looking into one.
He added that when Texas is playing all its Big 12 opponents on its network, those teams will be receiving the same exposure. Just not every day.
"Most other schools don't have the oomph," Magnus said. "I think Texas has the oomph."
Oh, it has oomph.
The University of the Joneses just moved into a neighborhood with only one house in it. Its house. This is Texas' world, and everyone else from Oklahoma to Oregon — your move, Phil Knight — is living in it.
All that remains is a catchy name for the new network.
Magnus said the two parties have yet to come up with one and was soliciting recommendations. So here goes a few:
- We Are Texas and You Aren't
- What Starts at Texas Changes Our Bank Account
- The Joneses
- We're Texas; Give Us Your Money
- Our Offensive Line Coach Has His Own Show, Does Yours?
- Extreme Cross Country
We got a million of 'em. In all likelihood, it will be something much more elegant and dignified than those suggestions.
Something like the Texa$ Network.
