The Big12 meeting is about ALOT more than expansion. As UConn fans we only care about expansion (as we should) but expansion only occurs if the B12 makes a major business course correction.
OU President Boren has decided the Big12 business model is flawed and is not competitive/sustainable. The Big12 has always taken a more individualist approach by allowing its teams to sell their tier 3 media rights. Under the Big12 business model the collective value of the conference media rights was not believed to be significantly larger than media value of the individual program added together. As such, the more valuable individual programs like UT thought they would lose money if they fully and evenly shared revenues with the ISUs and KSUs of the conference. The LHN may be an abomination to other members in the B12 but that is the system they agreed to and UT just took advantage of the system.
The SEC and Big10 have proven a more collective model is superior beyond a shadow of a doubt. (At least in the current cable system, who knows what happens as more people unplug and live streaming increases in the future?) In essence the Big10's and SEC's recent revenues demonstrate the collective media right in a large, geographically diverse region far exceeds the sum of the individual schools' media value. OSU is making more money in the Big10 than they could on their own even while sharing that revenue with Purdue and Indiana.
Boren is asking the Big12 to adopt a B10 type business model. That means expansion into new media areas, that means more collective bargaining of all conference media rights (B12 network) , that mean more centralized authority in the conference commissioner. Basically Boren is asking the University Presidents to acknowledge financially everything the B12 did for the past 5 years was wrong. This is not going to be accepted in a 3 day meeting.
Yes ... but also, when talking conference networks, bigger is better. LHN is a 1-school network and has failed commercially but if you include content from mediocrities like Purdue, Iowa, Minnesota, Rutgers, etc (or Ole Miss, Miss State, Auburn, Arkansas, South Carolina, Missouri) it complements the power schools content and brings in a lot more cable subscribers. It's the same principle behind cable bundling, lumping ESPN with the Weather Channel, Nickelodeon, HBO raises revenue to everyone.
The trouble is that Texas has a choice about which bundle it wants to belong to -- B12 bundle, SEC bundle, B1G bundle, ACC bundle, Pac bundle -- it can be in any of them it chooses -- and in some of them (ACC), it can carve out special deals a la Notre Dame. It has no real motivation to commit to the least valuable bundle (B12). And if UT is out, then the B12 bundle is a failure commercially, even with additional schools.
There is also the possibility to create a multi-conference bundle, e.g. a B12+ACC network or B12+Pac network or even a B12+Pac+ACC network.
Really, Texas has to make a decision. Oklahoma is pushing Texas to decide now, not delay, with the threat of making its own commitments that take B12 options off the table. The networks have a lot to say about what is possible. Texas has to consider potential political repercussions from damaging the other B12 Texas schools (Tech, TCU, Baylor). It is a complex decision-making process. You can see why Texas would want to take its time.
