Texas reportedly alters Michigan home-and-home series to facilitate Big 12 exit

Negotiations between the Texas Longhorns, Oklahoma Sooners, and the Big 12 for the programs to leave the conference for the SEC a year early also included the biggest power players in college sports — the television networks that invest hundreds of millions of dollars in broadcasting rights every year, the same money fueling conference realignment over the last 40 years following the landmark 1984 Supreme Court decision in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma.

In the case of FOX, that means landing $20 million of the $100 million in forfeited television revenue as part of the exit agreement announced on Thursday.

But it also resulted in Texas altering its future non-conference schedule by changing up its home-and-home series with Michigan scheduled for the 2024 and 2027, a series scheduled by the Longhorns in the wake of previous conference departures last decade. Instead of playing the first game in Austin and the second game in Ann Arbor, Texas will travel to face Michigan on the road in 2024 before hosting the Wolverines in 2027.

So Texas fans will have the chance to travel to Tuscaloosa and Ann Arbor in consecutive years while enjoying the benefits afford by an SEC home schedule in 2024.