My overall view is that the Big 12 will remain a viable P5 league as long as Texas and OU want it to be, which mostly means as long as Texas wants it to be. The Big 12 is not very stable because the core of schools that determine its future is too small. That some key decision makers at Texas and OU have moved on or will soon may help a little. But there has to be something to trigger a first move, and animosity toward Texas isn't likely to do it.

The dynamics of the Big 12 are different than they used to be. Nebraska and A&M were good enough brands to be desirable elsewhere and, when they were disenchanted with Texas, they looked. Colorado to the PAC is sort of like Virginia Tech to the ACC; they are much better fits in their current homes than they ever were elsewhere. Missouri wanted out but got out only because the SEC had no available option that it thought was better.

Now, all the schools in the Big 12 can be disenchanted with Texas all they want. But in the absence of a complete cataclysmic breakup or something truly unexpected (like, say, Wake Forest dropping sports or Louisville catching the death penalty), the only one that could conceivably do anything about it is Oklahoma. OU is not going to the Big Ten without Texas (or maybe Kansas if other things happen first). OU would be foolish to make the first move to join the PAC or ACC because of the distance involved, and there are really good reasons not to go west that I have commented on elsewhere. That leaves the SEC, and OU will go to the SEC over its coaches' objections because for cultural and recruiting reasons it would be really hard for OU to achieve the same results in the SEC as it does in the Big 12.

Think about how changing conferences impacts recruiting. Missouri had the talent to compete in SEC football when it first joined. Now it doesn't compete because it can no longer attract kids from Texas. Pitt basketball is dying on the vine in the ACC in part because Pitt foolishly pushed out a very good coach, but also because Pitt no longer plays a bunch of conference games in the New York/New Jersey region where it had developed a strong recruiting presence. WVU's football recruiting is being held together with JUCO bailing wire and it recruits reasonably well in basketball at the moment mostly because it has a coach who will make the Hall of Fame someday. Colorado joining the PAC works because that is where it recruited when it was most successful in Big 8 football in the late 1980s and early 1990s. OU is one of the ten biggest names in college football, and it would transition to the SEC better than Missouri from a recruiting standpoint, but it's not going to compete for national championships nearly as easily playing an SEC schedule but only once every other year in College Station, Texas and maybe the Red River Rivalry if Texas doesn't pout and take its toys home like it did with A&M.

So again, it comes back to Texas and whether staying in the Big 12 can leave it with a similar financial picture as it would have elsewhere.

I get that all bets are off when the Big 12's GOR expires and its television contract is up for renewal. But so long as the money is reasonably right for Texas and OU, there has to be some trigger to cause movement.

[Post edited by Tailgate Guru at 03/19/2018 01:25AM]