Documents Show Inner Dealings To Keep Big 12 Alive

[gangrene]

beebe.pdf

Documents show inner dealings to keep Big 12 alive

This story, and Beebe's "confidential white paper" in particular, is an interesting read. In my opinion, Beebe's plea was desperate, full of speculation and relied heavily on conjecture intended to frighten and/or panic the Big 12 ADs into believing the formation of 16-team super conferences would result in congressional intervention, pressure to pay student-athletes, tax consequences, public scrutiny and increased pressure on ADs and HCs to compete and win. He even cited the Big 10's loss of population, Pac 10's "fair-weather" fans and travel costs/time zone differences and the southern/Sun Belt region fans' geographical pride as reasons to ponder when exploring conference options.

Seriously? Is that what kept the Big 12(-2) together? Aside from being well-written, this reads like any message board thread on conference realignment...heavy on opinion and light on facts.

[gangrene]

I forgot to add that if the remaining Big XII schools had concerns over time zone differences for student athletes (a highly publicized concern for Texas A&M) and travel costs to the west coast schools (and Beebe must have felt they were valid concerns to include them in his plea), shouldn't UNT be even more concerned about those issues in regards to the WAC for the same reasons?

[GrayEagle]

I forgot to add that if the remaining Big XII schools had concerns over time zone differences for student athletes (a highly publicized concern for Texas A&M) and travel costs to the west coast schools (and Beebe must have felt they were valid concerns to include them in his plea), shouldn't UNT be even more concerned about those issues in regards to the WAC for the same reasons?

Then shouldn't A&M have pushed to stay in the Big 12 (all Central Time Zone with the departure of Colorado) instead of toying with the SEC (two time zones)?

[gangrene]

Then shouldn't A&M have pushed to stay in the Big 12 (all Central Time Zone with the departure of Colorado) instead of toying with the SEC (two time zones)?

Good question...apparently A&M AD, Bill Byrne, didn't see the same issues with the one-hour time zone difference of the SEC as he did with the two-hour difference with the Pac 10 schools. Plus, Gene Stallings was really pushing the Aggies to join the SEC because of his past relationship there.

Pac-10 and Big 12: Will It Be a Partnership Or a Raid?

The report says that the six rumored Big 12 schools would fuse with Arizona and Arizona State to form an eight-team division. USC, UCLA, Oregon, Oregon State, Cal, Stanford, Washington and Washington State would form the other division of the "Big 16."

But Texas A&M athletic director Bill Byrne seemed to shoot down any such alliance on Wednesday before the report came out, saying the two-hour time difference and the distance between the schools would create logistical nightmares, especially for the non-revenue sports.

"I've heard a lot about the distances we'd have to have our student-athletes travel," Byrne said. "We had a really tough experience in April when we had to bring our teams from Seattle and Spokane and after ballgames and we got into College Station at I believe 6:30 in the morning. Then we expect for our kids to go to class at 8 o'clock. That's tough. We are really concerned about student-athletes on this thing."

Texas A&M reportedly still considering SEC

It's hard to imagine Texas and Texas A&M joining separate conferences -- their football rivalry goes back more than a century -- but Texas appears to have no interest in the SEC, while Texas A&M seems to be divided about the Pac-10, according to the report.

Texas A&M athletic director Bill Byrne, a former Oregon AD, is opposed to extensive westward travel for the Aggies, according to the report.

[Arkstfan]

I believe all those concerns are valid. DOJ is already looking at the BCS, no reason in these economic times why Congress wouldn't look at whether athletic departments spending $80 million + with 15% or less of that money spent on the kids should be eligible to receive money as "charitable" donations.

If donations to the Texas athletic department became taxable and the donations fell by an amount equal to the tax paid, the Horns would lose in excess of $10 million a year. They spend 6.18% of their revenue on scholarships and that's supposedly their charitable focus.