UPDATE: Future of the Big 12
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By Chris Level, Aaron Dickens
* All signs point to Texas A&M becoming the 13th member of the Southeastern Conference. It likely won't be official on the A&M side of things until the university's Board of Regents meet on Aug. 22, but everything we have heard from our own sources indicates that the train is on the tracks and moving very fast. We would be surprised at this point if it didn't happen.
* Level spoke with Robert Cessna of the Bryan-College Station Eagle today about A&M's potential timetable and he said if the Aggies did move, they would want to announce the move to the SEC very quickly and get that process started. They saw how Nebraska was treated last year by the Big 12, how TCU has been treated by the Mountain West, and want to get the process over and done with as soon as possible.
* The SEC will try to lure Oklahoma and Oklahoma State as well, but our SoonerScoop.com colleague Carey Murdock is reporting that OU isn't and hasn't been receptive to overtures from the SEC mainly due to academic reasons.
"OU won't go the SEC," Murdock wrote. "(Oklahoma president David) Boren doesn't want any part of the SEC. He has spent a major part of his life building up Oklahoma's academic reputation and if OU went to the SEC, the perception might be that OU is nothing more than a football school. That would pretty much destroy every mention you've heard about OU having more national merit scholars per capita than any other public institution in the country."
* Murdock is also reporting that the SEC came after Oklahoma twice last year, but "OU rebuffed those overtures both times."
* Oklahoma and Oklahoma State are still very much tied together and it's hard to imagine many circumstances where they don't end up in the same conference -- whether that be the Big 12 or another conference.
* Level had two sources close to the situation in Norman -- Murdock is not one of them -- who referred to the SEC as a "cesspool" in terms of academics, recruiting practices and the like.
* In the near future, you should expect to read and hear a lot of talk about the remaining nine schools focusing on keeping the Big 12 together. Theoretically, assuming that ABC/ESPN and Fox don't try and force the issue, a nine-team Big 12 would remain viable until the league's current first-tier rights agreement expire in 2014-15.
* Texas Tech does not have a stand-alone invitation to the Pac-12, and did not have one last summer to the Pac-10. Tech's invite was always tied to Texas and that is almost certainly still the case, although there is a growing feeling that Tech would land in the Pac regardless of what Texas does if the dominos start to fall in favor of 16-team super conferences.
* The idea of Texas going independent sounds a lot easier than it would be in reality. UT would have to find a landing spot for all of its athletic teams outside of football, and then there could be potential Title IX issues if they were forced to cut sports.
* If there is any other additional move beyond A&M moving to the SEC -- i.e. Missouri to the Big Ten or Kansas to the Big East -- you would see the Big 12 fall apart very quickly. In that instance, Texas' hand would be forced and they would head west with Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Tech.
* If you're a Tech fan, you should feel good about the fact that the university's leadership has great relationships with principal parties at both Texas and Oklahoma. President Guy Bailey has a great relationship with his counterpart at Texas, Bill Powers. Chancellor Kent Hance has a great relationship with Powers and Texas A.D. DeLoss Dodds. Oklahoma A.D. Joe Castiglione is Kirby Hocutt's mentor. Hocutt's right-hand man, Joe Parker, has a very good relationship with Castiglione and is also connected at Texas.
* Bailey and Powers were both at the NCAA meetings earlier this week.
* Finally, this won't wrap up quickly. There are a lot of moving parts, and you're going to hear a lot of speculation in the coming weeks about School X talking to Conference Y -- just prepare yourself for that.
This post was edited on 8/11 8:54 PM by A. Dickens