On Texas Football: How newest conference realignment affects Longhorns
On the latest video episode On Texas Football’s Saturday Conversations with Paul, Inside Texas’ Bobby Burton and Paul Wadlington discuss the latest changes in conference alignment to the Big 12 Conference affects the Longhorns even as Texas moves to Southeastern Conference in 2024.
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Burton said when Texas and Oklahoma “struck out on a path” to join the SEC that began the latest round of realignment.
“The Longhorns and Oklahoma struck out on a path and said, ‘we’re going to the SEC,’ and that kind of created this tidal wave of issues,” Burton explained. “The Big 12 then grabs Central Florida, they grab Cincinnati, then they go out and get BYU as well as University of Houston. That put the onus on the Pac 12 to make a decision.
“What happened in the interim is the Big 12 went out and secured a TV rights deal that the Pac 12 with the loss of USC and UCLA could not match and therefore we have further disarray.”
Wadlington opined that the latest moves – in which Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah will jump from the Pacific 12 Conference to the Big 12 in 2024 – was inevitable as college football transitions to “super conferences.”
“It’s what I’ve thought was going to happen for the last decade,” Wadlington said. “I’ve been writing that the college football is going to realign into super conferences – the haves and have nots – and that’s exactly what’s happened. Texas is watching a game of musical chairs from a Barcalounger, and we’ve got our feet kicked up with a drink in our hand.
“If you ever seen the movie Trading Places – ‘how you feeling, Billy Ray? Feeling good,’ that’s how Texas is right now.”
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Texas will have to deal with the Big 12’s realignment this season as Cincinnati, Houston, BYU and UCF join the conference this year when they play at Houston and at home against BYU on back-to-back weeks. The Longhorns will join a 16-team SEC in 2024.
Wadlington said there are now two conferences that matter – the Big 10 and the SEC.
“Does that mean Clemson can’t field a good football team or can’t play for the national title? No, it does not,” he said. “Does that mean that Florida State can’t do that? No, it does not. But any school outside of those two leagues is best understood as a one off, meaning you evaluate the school and the program on its own merits, not from how the conference creates value for it.”
Wadlington said the latest moves were all very predictable.
“This was how it was going to happen,” he explained. “You know you can complain about gravity all you like, you may not like it that if you’re up on your ladder and you fall off, you fall to the ground, but gravity is an impartial force that just acts on you.
“This was ‘economic gravity,’ and the only thing that was going to stop it or halt it was personal relationships, a history of association, mutual sense of cooperation, or good feelings that the Big 12 had none of, particularly without Texas.”
There’s plenty more to glean from the video so you owe it to yourself to go watch it in its entirety.
