Texas Independence, a modest proposal.

While it makes sense for the University of Texas to allow for its brethren to make their own decisions first in order to save face, the only two schools that can really make such a decision are OU and OSU on their OU’s coattails. TTU does not get into the PAC-12 without UT, it doesn’t have the academic prowess. UofA, Cal-Berkeley, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Stanford, and USC are all AAU member schools. The only BIG XII schools that hold that distinction are UT, A&M (who is going to play elsewhere,) Kansas (who isn’t invited,) Missouri and Iowa St. (who will both go to the B1G) If UT doesn’t go PAC-12, neither does TTU. UT will not go independent. The PAC-16 offers more viewers (higher TV revenue,) and an easier path to the championship game than the SEC, the only other conference worth playing football in.

Even if schools like Tech and Kansas hate us, the prospect of an ESPN televised game + nice pay day will probably be too much to pass up for pride’s sake. I guess filling out the bottom and middle part of the schedule wasn’t ever really in question. Schools will line-up out the door for a check and national tv appearance. We just need to secure those high profile BCS opponents.

I posted this on another independence post, so some things I talk about may not be addressed here, but I think it bears repeating as it covers many of the “independence is viable” positions. DeLoss has said Texas will never go independent. Why? Because he does not solely think about football and realizes that Texas is Texas because of the quality of ALL of its sports.

1. Hurts baseball and basketball WAY too much and, unlike most schools, those are actually spring sports that generate revenue. Look at baseball. We make it back to Omaha after not being there for ONE year and people treat it with a sigh of relief, not jumping for joy like the other seven schools that went this year. If Texas goes independent, Texas baseball plays a Dallas Baptist type schedule and no school in their right mind is going to schedule a mid-conference weekend with Texas as the opponent. Personally, I like playing in Omaha every year and not playing Alcorn State and Seattle University in weekend series. Same goes for basketball. We are just now really establishing ourselves as an elite basketball school. Going independent means we do not play a consistent schedule and have to play Drexel, Belmont, and Idaho State because, again, no one will schedule us in mid-conference season. Recruits stay away from Texas like the plague because of no national exposure. Basketball goes down the tubes in a hurry. Don’t think that could happen because "we are Texas?" Ha! Look at how basketball fared before Barnes. I’ll give you a clue: not good. So going independent hurts your most storied and prestigious program in baseball and your stabilizing and top flight basketball program. If you think a conference like the ACC (which might be striving to be a super conference) will take all of Texas’s programs sans football, you are nuts, unless you want Texas playing in the WAC in other sports. DeLoss would not let that happen…ever. The notion of going independent just to save the A&M game would cause DeLoss to snort his morning Metamucil out of his nose. Fans (that actually care about Texas) want to see Texas be elite in everything more than one damn football game against A&M. Going independent hurts that goal.

2. People have been screaming at ND for years to get their football program into a conference. They had to have all of their other programs join the Big East just to survive and the Big East did not care at the time because they had premier football programs in Miami, BC, and VT. Once the old traditionalists retire, new BCS (or whatever replaces it) coordinators will wonder why, exactly, ND gets an exception when everyone else plays a conference schedule. I know everyone in my generation (late 20s-early 30s) wonders that question. We get tradition, but one school that plays all three service academies and only has one to two hard games all year, gets an exception. Why would anyone grant Texas that same exception?? We are easily more hated than ND because we are good at EVERYTHING. Even if the BCS goes away, you think the coming super conferences are going to let us in on their party as an independent?? HA! Fat chance. Plus, ND has gone downhill since the BCS era started because of no football conference affiliation. They have made a whooping three BCS bowls and been obliterated in all three by a combined score of 116-43 (41-9 to Oregon State, 34-20 to Ohio State, 41-14 to LSU). Even with the ridiculous NBC deal, recruits stay away from ND. Of course, if you told a rah rah ND fan 50 years ago that ND would have an exclusive deal with NBC they would say that ND wins the title every year because ND is too big to fail, especially with its own exclusive network deal, because of its recruiting power. Don’t think Texas is too big to fail because that is dangerous thinking. Especially the "Baylor never says ‘No’" type. I know I, as a Texas alum, do not want to measure myself against the Baylors of the college world, but against the OUs, USCs, UCLAs, Nebraskas, LSUs, Floridas, North Carolinas, etc because we hold ourselves to an elite level. Recruits want to see that too. You think all of those schools will still schedule us, especially after we are the perceived “bad guys” in all of this? No way.

3. The windfall you talk about assumes that the LHN is available, but even if all 500,000 alum pay (which is generous because, if you went to Texas, you know there are plenty of non-sports fans in the student body and alumni populations), that is chicken scratch to ESPN and the cable companies. If a show get 500,000 viewers, it gets canceled, not renewed for millions and millions of dollars. So what if we own the cable rights? If no one wants to show your stuff, it does not matter if you own the rights or how many alumni want to pay to see it, it will not be put on TV because TV can’t make money off of it. I think we are seeing that right now with the big cable companies telling ESPN to forget it on the LHN. They don’t care that a couple hundred thousand people are mad. That will continue into the future. "Oh, you want to see Texas on TV? We have TV deals with conference x, y, and z…maybe Texas should join them."

4. The attitude that Texas is not taking a PR hit as stated in other comments shows me that these people need to get out of their mom’s basement and interact with other people. The lack of LHN support from TV providers and every school that’s worth something wanting to leave the Big XII is a major PR hit. We look terrible right now and people want to see us fail. And I don’t want to hear the "oh they are jealous or haters" or whatever argument. They have influence on things that make our little UT world go round. I know several Ags and Sooners that have called their television providers saying they DON’T want the LHN because they don’t want to pay for it or see it in their channel guide. Petty? Probably. Can still have an impact? Yeah. I (unfortunately) live in Oklahoma right now. Granted, there is some bias there, but even people I knew supported UT up here solely because they hate OU think that Texas looks bad and wants the LHN to fail because they think we have overextended our power. Others Texas Exes in other parts of the country have said we do not look good right now to people outside the UT world.

So any positives that I could possibly grant you about independence are vastly outweighed by the short term and long term negative impacts. Independence is simply not in the best interest of the university. Which is why DeLoss has said it will never happen.