Getty Image / Tim Warner
It’s no secret that Big 12 members and the conference as a whole are pretty salty about Texas and Oklahoma leaving the conference starting with the 2024-2025 athletic season. After all, they’re going to lose a lot of money due to those two schools leaving.
Exactly how much is hard to say. But, it’s a reasonable assumption that Texas and Oklahoma will get double the amount of money from television contracts when they move to the SEC as opposed to what teams will get in the Big 12, and the Big 12 is definitely an also-ran league behind the Big Ten and SEC now.
The ironic things about all of this is that while they are a major brand and have arguably more potential than any program in America, Texas hasn’t been great by any means on the football field lately. Their last Big 12 title came in 2009, and they haven’t even played in the championship game since. Oklahoma has been much better and has been the league’s best team the last decade, but even the Sooners went 6-7 last year.
And, on day 2 of Big 12 Media Days on Wednesday, Big 12 Deputy Commissioner Tim Weiser took a shot at Texas for leaving the league that was probably unbecoming of his position.
“I continue to maintain the choice Texas made wasn’t a financial one because we all know what the Texas resources are like,” Weiser told the 3MAW Podcast Wednesday. “I think their (decision) was more about affiliating with a group of schools that on a given Saturday. They would rather get beat by Alabama than Kansas State or Florida than Iowa State. That was really driving the way they looked out down the road.”
Yeah, it definitely wasn’t about the money, dude. Really brilliant call. Hard to imagine why Texas and Oklahoma wanted to leave like leadership with that!