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What leaving the Big 12 for the SEC would really mean for Oklahoma, Texas
By RJ Young
FOX Sports College Football Writer
"The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Oklahoma notified the Big 12 Athletic Conference today that they will not be renewing their grants of media rights following expiration in 2025," the joint statement read.
Put another way: Oklahoma and Texas filed divorce papers at the county courthouse, in front of the in-laws, in their hometown, at 9 a.m. on a Monday, turned around and shouted "I’m single now!" as the Southeastern Conference looked on with designs on both.
This story is a country music song, and like the best breakup songs, OU and UT filing for divorce is quintessentially American.
The Big 12 Conference is a recent development in college athletics and, specifically, college football. It began as polygamous union between Big 8 teams and four others poached from the defunct Southwestern Conference in 1995.
Compare that to the Big Ten, which has been around since 1896, and the SEC, which predates World War II, and you get how time creates bonds that feel tighter year-after-year as the cultural ethos of the league remains geographically unchanged.
The Big 12 was only beginning this process before being poached for the first time just 15 years into its experiment.
After beginning with 12 teams, the Big 12 has since been whittled to 10, with four of its founding members leaving for the Pac-12 (Colorado), Big Ten (Nebraska) and Southeastern Conference (Missouri and Texas A&M). Two of those losses were filled by the additions of TCU and West Virginia.
As any of those four Big 12 exes will tell you, 50 percent of American marriages end in divorce or permanent separation. But 80 percent of divorcees get remarried in less than four years.
So, while I'm inclined to think OU and Texas are right to seek a divorce, I'm not sure getting remarried right away is the way the Mandalorian was talking about.
I like to think both OU and Texas would go on a few dates before getting hitched right away, even if it's to the richest, most powerful suitor in the room. Indeed, being in a relationship with a conference, rather than married to it, has its benefits for programs that know they're among the fairest of them all.
The only people who want to be the most talented person in a marriage are the ones who don’t want to be married at all, but want to present as married — like Notre Dame and its open-marriage with the ACC.
But all (re)marriages aren't equal, and matters of money usually figure. For OU and Texas, that looks like about $38 million a year that each still owes the league in annual spousal support through 2025.
Big 12 presidents reportedly were willing to offer OU and UT $56.6 million annually to stay — 1.5 times what each brought home under the current deal.
This is like finding out your spouse was cheating on you for the better part of a year and then offering to buy them a new house, a new car and a jet ski, all in their name, just to stay.
Neither OU nor Texas stood still for the cash, though. After all, $56.6 million isn't much more than what a Big Ten team gets in its current revenue-sharing deal (about $54 million each).
The pair have been in lock-step on leaving the conference. For them, a move away from the Big 12 has more to do with their football future than the money they know they can make in a move almost anywhere.
For OU and Texas, a sense of balance in earning potential, prestige and talent is paramount.
Outside of OU and UT, only Nebraska won a national title in the Big 12. The Cornhuskers bolted 10 years ago.
OU and Texas feel unequally yoked.
WHY OU AND TEXAS FILED FOR DIVORCE
If OU and Texas join the SEC, the benefits for both are plain: an increase in prestige, recruiting, money and power.
The new SEC would become the college football's first super league with 16 teams and boast a recruiting footprint that covers the entire Southeast and Southwest, from Charleston to El Paso.
For Oklahoma, the move is about winning — not another Big 12 title but the national championship, which the Sooners haven't done for 21 years.
"What the hell good does it do for us to win six-straight [Big 12] titles if we're gonna get foot-to-ass every time we make the Playoff?" my buddy and Sooner-bred friend Kim said.
"RJ," my buddy and Sooner fan Ajax said, "you gotta know we feel we can whoop folks in that league if we get a chance to see it week-in, week-out. We gave the Gators the chomp, and that team took Bama to the brink."
Florida was down three stars on offense — including a couple first-round picks — in that game, but Ajax’s point is taken. A 2020 Cotton Bowl win against a shallow Florida meant more than a skull-dragging in the CFP in years prior to LSU, Alabama and Clemson.
The Sooners don't want to carry anybody’s league — even one they helped form. They want to live like Alabama.
Nick Saban’s team has won six national titles since 2009, and the SEC has won eight of the last 15.
Other than SEC teams, only Ohio State, Florida State and Clemson have managed to win national titles in that timeframe. So when Alabama doesn't win it, chances are another SEC team does.
But that's OU fans’ deal. For UT, Horns fans are tired of Texas A&M’s fans’ lip.
"Chaps my ass, RJ," a Longhorn fan and friend told me. "A&M wasn't worth a damn in the Big 12. OU dropped 70 on 'em and they took a knee in the third [quarter of that game.] They move to the SEC, and act like they won a national title. They ain't won nothing in that league. So I say, 'Let's go, too! Shoot!'"
Given those facts and opinions, it makes sense that Oklahoma and Texas want to be "where it just means more."
Texas A&M has reaped the benefit of the SEC’s shine — just like Missouri has — though the Aggies have had recent success, too.
A Heisman winner in 2012. An Orange Bowl win in 2020.
Ampersand U coach Jimbo Fisher has the Aggies in position to challenge Saban and the Tide for the SEC West division title this season, which is where OU and Texas would logically play if they married into the conference.
HOW A 16-TEAM SEC MIGHT WORK
OU and Texas are located in the far west of a 16-team SEC as composed. It would make sense that the two teams farthest east in the West division would move to the East division.
That means Alabama and Auburn would join Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vanderbilt and Tennessee in the East. The eight-team West would be Missouri, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Arkansas, LSU, Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M.
So two divisions, with some scheduling fixes, still gets you a nine-game conference schedule but doesn't help you get more teams into the proposed 12-team playoff expansion.
In another system, with four teams in each division, the SEC could break the conference into:
Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri and Texas A&M
Arkansas, LSU, Ole Miss and Mississippi State
Alabama. Auburn, Tennessee and Vanderbilt
Georgia, Florida, Kentucky and South Carolina
This format also keeps regional rivalries of importance for divisional foes, with the added bonus of forcing A&M and UT to renew their Thanksgiving rivalry game. It also leaves OU-Texas in Dallas to be played in the second week of October.
Each team would play three games against its division and two teams apiece from the remaining three divisions.
This format also facilitates an average of at least one home game with Alabama, UGA, Florida, LSU every year. OU and Texas would visit or host every single SEC team inside of their first four years in the conference.
There's still a lot of moving and shaking that has to be done before any of this could be put into play. But it will also lead to another Playoff expansion — to at least 16 teams.
Not because the rest of college football would want to expand so much as the SEC would show up with at least eight teams it thinks should get in.
Buckle up, Buttercup. We're about to throw realignment into the high gear, running loose, fast and taking the high-line against the wall.
Stay in the groove.
RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast "The No. 1 Ranked Show with RJ Young." Follow him on Twitter at @RJ_Young, and subscribe to "The RJ Young Show" on YouTube. He is not on a StepMill.
