COLUMN: Amid Awkwardness, Hurt Feelings, An Oklahoma Early Exit from Big 12 Would Be for the Best

Because the Huge 12 Convention takes heart stage this week, the league’s future — each short-term and long-term — stays cloudier than ever.

Media Days unfold Wednesday and Thursday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX, and whereas there can be loads of queries about backup quarterbacks and depth charts and tradition change and NIL, the Huge 12’s simple underlying storylines are about membership.

Ten members in 2022. Fourteen in 2023 and 2024. Twelve in 2025.

And that’s simply what’s on paper in the intervening time.

The June 30 bombshell that pushed USC and UCLA into the Huge Ten Convention created shockwaves that despatched the Huge 12 into scramble mode — a proactive hunt, actually, which is a pleasant change of tempo contemplating the league’s quarter century of reactive conduct.

Quickly after the information broke that the Pac-12 would lose each of its prime properties within the Los Angeles market, Huge 12 management learn the altering panorama, foresaw the necessity for extra growth and went to work discovering the following technology of Huge 12 faculties.

A number of studies had the Huge 12 within the boardroom a number of instances over the last two weeks, exploring a partnership with college representatives from Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.

No transactions occurred, and it appears nothing is imminent after what was mainly a fact-finding mission on the a part of each the faculties and the Huge 12. The SEC and the Huge Ten’s transfer to 16 members, nevertheless, give the Huge 12 motive to imagine extra growth is important, and this time, the Huge 12 acted shortly.

These growth plans hit a possible roadblock when it was reported final week that the Pac-12 and the ACC are discussing a TV partnership that might reanimate the floundering Pac-12 Community and fortify the new-and-growing ACC Community — and sure depart the Huge 12 as an growth bridesmaid.

What this all means for Oklahoma (and Texas) is the potential of an earlier departure for the Southeastern Convention.

With their media rights contractually obligated to the Huge 12 via the 2024-25 educational yr, Oklahoma and Texas have roughly 40 million causes to stay across the Huge 12 for an additional yr. However that buyout, vital because it sounds, could be negated inside two or three years by new cash from the SEC — and, in Texas’ case, ESPN nonetheless owes UT some $160 million for the Longhorn Community.

Cash isn’t a leash that may maintain the Sooners and Longhorns.

For now, because the Pac-12 desperately tries to remain afloat, its members are little doubt contemplating their choices. Do they stick with a regional footprint, maybe including a Boise State or San Diego State, and kind a profitable scheduling alliance with the ACC? Do they recommit to one another after which attempt to pluck any Huge 12 members who could be getting chilly ft over the league’s continuously shifting membership? Or do they break formation, declare each college for themselves and splinter off into the shelters of the Huge 12 and Huge Ten?

Oklahoma followers desperate to get to the SEC needs to be rooting for an additional spherical of Huge 12 growth — and the earlier the higher.

If the Huge 12 is ready to develop once more and reel in any Pac-12 faculties, that might placate among the Huge 12 angst over shedding two flagship athletic departments, and that ought to permit them to let OU and Texas depart yr early — summer time of 2024.

Emotions within the Huge 12 have been damage for happening a yr now. So long as everybody will get what they’re owed, one other spherical of Huge 12 growth would facilitate an OU and Texas departure in 2024, and that might be good for everybody.

In each phrases and deeds, final summer time’s information has created awkwardness and embarrassment. When OU and Texas performed for the nationwide championship in softball, as an example, nobody from the Huge 12 workplace was in Oklahoma Metropolis representing the league. When OU and Texas brass met with different league members at Huge 12 spring conferences in June, Bob Bowlsby mentioned they sat collectively within the boardroom “as a result of we needed to.”

If the Huge 12 expands once more, it might create the proper alternative for an amicable divorce. Greatest to maneuver on as quickly as potential.