The Truce Between Rivals Texas and Oklahoma That Led Them to the SEC
Texas and Oklahoma will meet Saturday on opposite sides of a century-old football rivalry known as the Red River Showdown. Yet one year ago, these sworn enemies launched a secret alliance aimed at securing a more lucrative future for both of them.
The unexpected union they initiated last fall sent shock waves through college athletics nine months later when Texas and Oklahoma decided to abandon the Big 12 Conference, a league they helped create 25 years ago, for what they believe is a richer future as part of an expanded, even more powerful Southeastern Conference.
The backstory of how the rivals joined forces is a primer on how the biggest programs are constantly, ruthlessly calculating their financial path through wild periods in college sports history.
The value of TV contracts is exploding and every university wants the biggest slice of that possible. Yet the pandemic has created a financial pinch for even the biggest schools. Canceled games and limited attendance wiped out big revenue streams in 2020 as the cost of Covid-19 testing and protocols drove costs up.
All of these factors were bearing down on Texas and Oklahoma a year ago. Two university leaders who had just taken over their roles in 2020—Oklahoma president Joseph Harroz and Texas president Jay Hartzell —decided to explore what they could do about it, according to a longtime administrator in the Big 12.
The athletic directors of the two schools—Chris Del Conte at Texas and Joe Castiglione at Oklahoma—are friends who have worked on parallel tracks in college athletics for more than 20 years. They were already talking more than usual in the fall of 2020 due to challenges posed by the pandemic and the push to allow college athletes to make money on their likenesses. They also discussed whether the Big 12 could best support them in confronting these challenges, people familiar with the matter said.
The schools knew that the best chance to increase their revenues would come in 2025, when the Big 12 broadcasting deals with ESPN and Fox Sports expired. But things had changed since the last time the Big 12’s broadcasting deals were up for grabs following the sport’s last round of conference realignment a decade ago.
The conference’s 13-year, $200 million-a-year deal was struck in 2012, when Missouri and Texas A&M were still part of the conference. Those schools are now part of the SEC, replaced by less high-profile additions in Texas Christian and West Virginia. School leaders feared that the next round of deals could be worth less, not more.
“Flat would be a win, and it might have been less than that,” Hartzell later told Texas state legislators in August 2021.
In fall 2021, Hartzell happened to be one of three Big 12 presidents on a committee tasked with deciding whether to secure an early extension of its television contract or wait until 2025. During the process, a consultant they hired gave them some bad news: that ESPN and Fox did not have an appetite to negotiate an extension four years ahead of schedule.
“We were very interested in a renewal of our rights agreement and a long-term future with the Big 12, however, we felt it was too early to have that conversation with four seasons remaining on our current agreement,” said ESPN president of programming and original content Burke Magnus.
What worried Texas and Oklahoma, according to people familiar with the matter, was the fact that while ESPN had denied the Big 12’s request for an early renewal, it had struck a new 10-year TV deal with the SEC worth more than $300 million a year. The new SEC deal was six times as great than the existing deal, which runs through 2023.
The new TV deal—combined with revenue from the SEC Network and other sources—will push the SEC’s annual revenue to nearly $1 billion a year. Disbursements to member schools would rise from about $52 million each in 2020 to upward of $70 million going forward.
That is a much bigger payout than in the Big 12, which reported $409.2 million in revenue in 2020 and annual payouts of $40 million per school.
Another factor in the schools’ thinking was the push to expand the College Football Playoff, which accelerated in early 2021. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and the Big 12’s Bob Bowlsby were part of the four-man College Football Playoff management committee subgroup that considered expanding the playoff format from four teams to 12.
According to a person familiar with Texas and Oklahoma’s thinking, this accelerated their push to leave the Big 12. Adding at-large bids relieved concerns that the schools would give up their direct path to the semifinal via the Big 12 championship if they joined a deeper conference where regular season losses might be more likely.
Hartzell reached out to Sankey via Zoom in the spring of 2021, he later told Texas legislators. He said this outreach did not violate the letter of Big 12 bylaws, which only state that members must notify leadership if they are approached by an external conference.
“We feel like the SEC has more stability, more security to be in a better spot in 2025 than the Big 12 does,” Hartzell told legislators. Oklahoma declined to comment on its involvement during this time.
In both states, knowledge of the plan was limited to the university presidents, athletic directors and the chairmen of the respective boards of regents, according to several people familiar with both universities.
“In my 60 years being close to the whole thing, I’ve never seen anything kept under cover like that,” said Mike Myers, an influential Texas booster who has a statue of his likeness outside of the Longhorns’ track stadium that bears his name.
Athletic directors in the SEC had been made aware early in the summer that Texas and Oklahoma might join, but neither they nor Sankey knew their league’s expansion would become public so soon after. Then the Houston Chronicle reported the move on July 21 in the middle of SEC Football Media Days.
The public revelation exposed one big problem with the plan. Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork said his school—which in 2011 had left the Big 12 for the SEC to get out of Texas’s shadow—wanted to remain the sole SEC member from the Lone Star state.
“The emotion on July 21 was really driven by [the fact that] we left the Big 12 because of the way the University of Texas has always operated. They’ve never been a good partner toward Texas A&M,” Bjork said this month. “That was our whole thing. Has anything changed?”
Sankey persuaded Texas A&M to look at the big picture and set aside their differences with the Longhorns. The value of adding two national brands like Texas and Oklahoma, Sankey argued, outweighed previous bad blood.
“The SEC is a leader and the SEC has to be proactive in this landscape in this landscape of college athletics constantly changing,” Bjork said. “There’s a reason why Texas wanted to follow our lead. That’s how we look at it”
The top brass at Texas saw things a bit differently. “It would be a political disaster to try to keep Texas out of the SEC,” said former Texas president and chancellor Bill Cunningham, who now teaches in the business school.
Nine days after the Houston Chronicle report on July 30, SEC presidents formally voted to admit Texas and Oklahoma. The Big 12 since then moved to backfill the losses by luring new members BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston, who will join as soon as 2024.
Leaving the Big 12 for the Longhorns and Sooners is not cheap. To depart before 2025, Texas and Oklahoma are subject to two years of conference media distributions, a total of about $80 million each.
It sounds expensive, but with the help of well-heeled boosters eager to push their teams to greater riches, it may not be prohibitive.
“If I were betting, I would say they would be in favor of exiting [early] and paying the $40 million (per year),” said Myers, the Longhorns booster.
Texas and Oklahoma will meet Saturday on opposite sides of a century-old football rivalry known as the Red River Showdown. Yet one year ago, these sworn enemies launched a secret alliance aimed at securing a more lucrative future for both of them.
The unexpected union they initiated last fall sent shock waves through college athletics nine months later when Texas and Oklahoma decided to abandon the Big 12 Conference, a league they helped create 25 years ago, for what they believe is a richer future as part of an expanded, even more powerful Southeastern Conference.
The backstory of how the rivals joined forces is a primer on how the biggest programs are constantly, ruthlessly calculating their financial path through wild periods in college sports history.
The value of TV contracts is exploding and every university wants the biggest slice of that possible. Yet the pandemic has created a financial pinch for even the biggest schools. Canceled games and limited attendance wiped out big revenue streams in 2020 as the cost of Covid-19 testing and protocols drove costs up.
All of these factors were bearing down on Texas and Oklahoma a year ago. Two university leaders who had just taken over their roles in 2020—Oklahoma president Joseph Harroz and Texas president Jay Hartzell —decided to explore what they could do about it, according to a longtime administrator in the Big 12.
The athletic directors of the two schools—Chris Del Conte at Texas and Joe Castiglione at Oklahoma—are friends who have worked on parallel tracks in college athletics for more than 20 years. They were already talking more than usual in the fall of 2020 due to challenges posed by the pandemic and the push to allow college athletes to make money on their likenesses. They also discussed whether the Big 12 could best support them in confronting these challenges, people familiar with the matter said.
The schools knew that the best chance to increase their revenues would come in 2025, when the Big 12 broadcasting deals with ESPN and Fox Sports expired. But things had changed since the last time the Big 12’s broadcasting deals were up for grabs following the sport’s last round of conference realignment a decade ago.
The conference’s 13-year, $200 million-a-year deal was struck in 2012, when Missouri and Texas A&M were still part of the conference. Those schools are now part of the SEC, replaced by less high-profile additions in Texas Christian and West Virginia. School leaders feared that the next round of deals could be worth less, not more.
“Flat would be a win, and it might have been less than that,” Hartzell later told Texas state legislators in August 2021.
In fall 2021, Hartzell happened to be one of three Big 12 presidents on a committee tasked with deciding whether to secure an early extension of its television contract or wait until 2025. During the process, a consultant they hired gave them some bad news: that ESPN and Fox did not have an appetite to negotiate an extension four years ahead of schedule.
“We were very interested in a renewal of our rights agreement and a long-term future with the Big 12, however, we felt it was too early to have that conversation with four seasons remaining on our current agreement,” said ESPN president of programming and original content Burke Magnus.
What worried Texas and Oklahoma, according to people familiar with the matter, was the fact that while ESPN had denied the Big 12’s request for an early renewal, it had struck a new 10-year TV deal with the SEC worth more than $300 million a year. The new SEC deal was six times as great than the existing deal, which runs through 2023.
The new TV deal—combined with revenue from the SEC Network and other sources—will push the SEC’s annual revenue to nearly $1 billion a year. Disbursements to member schools would rise from about $52 million each in 2020 to upward of $70 million going forward.
That is a much bigger payout than in the Big 12, which reported $409.2 million in revenue in 2020 and annual payouts of $40 million per school.
Another factor in the schools’ thinking was the push to expand the College Football Playoff, which accelerated in early 2021. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and the Big 12’s Bob Bowlsby were part of the four-man College Football Playoff management committee subgroup that considered expanding the playoff format from four teams to 12.
According to a person familiar with Texas and Oklahoma’s thinking, this accelerated their push to leave the Big 12. Adding at-large bids relieved concerns that the schools would give up their direct path to the semifinal via the Big 12 championship if they joined a deeper conference where regular season losses might be more likely.
Hartzell reached out to Sankey via Zoom in the spring of 2021, he later told Texas legislators. He said this outreach did not violate the letter of Big 12 bylaws, which only state that members must notify leadership if they are approached by an external conference.
“We feel like the SEC has more stability, more security to be in a better spot in 2025 than the Big 12 does,” Hartzell told legislators. Oklahoma declined to comment on its involvement during this time.
In both states, knowledge of the plan was limited to the university presidents, athletic directors and the chairmen of the respective boards of regents, according to several people familiar with both universities.
“In my 60 years being close to the whole thing, I’ve never seen anything kept under cover like that,” said Mike Myers, an influential Texas booster who has a statue of his likeness outside of the Longhorns’ track stadium that bears his name.
Athletic directors in the SEC had been made aware early in the summer that Texas and Oklahoma might join, but neither they nor Sankey knew their league’s expansion would become public so soon after. Then the Houston Chronicle reported the move on July 21 in the middle of SEC Football Media Days.
The public revelation exposed one big problem with the plan. Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork said his school—which in 2011 had left the Big 12 for the SEC to get out of Texas’s shadow—wanted to remain the sole SEC member from the Lone Star state.
“The emotion on July 21 was really driven by [the fact that] we left the Big 12 because of the way the University of Texas has always operated. They’ve never been a good partner toward Texas A&M,” Bjork said this month. “That was our whole thing. Has anything changed?”
Sankey persuaded Texas A&M to look at the big picture and set aside their differences with the Longhorns. The value of adding two national brands like Texas and Oklahoma, Sankey argued, outweighed previous bad blood.
“The SEC is a leader and the SEC has to be proactive in this landscape in this landscape of college athletics constantly changing,” Bjork said. “There’s a reason why Texas wanted to follow our lead. That’s how we look at it”
The top brass at Texas saw things a bit differently. “It would be a political disaster to try to keep Texas out of the SEC,” said former Texas president and chancellor Bill Cunningham, who now teaches in the business school.
Nine days after the Houston Chronicle report on July 30, SEC presidents formally voted to admit Texas and Oklahoma. The Big 12 since then moved to backfill the losses by luring new members BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston, who will join as soon as 2024.
Leaving the Big 12 for the Longhorns and Sooners is not cheap. To depart before 2025, Texas and Oklahoma are subject to two years of conference media distributions, a total of about $80 million each.
It sounds expensive, but with the help of well-heeled boosters eager to push their teams to greater riches, it may not be prohibitive.
“If I were betting, I would say they would be in favor of exiting [early] and paying the $40 million (per year),” said Myers, the Longhorns booster.
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