UT Ptesident Jay Hartzell grew up in Oklahoma and is a John Marshall High School alum just like me. Small world.
He took some grilling on Monday from the Texas state legislature on the Longhorns’ decision to leave the Big 12.
Texas was compared to Cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation and scorned for the Horns being 3-7 versus the TCU Horned Frogs these past ten seasons. See former TCU grad Dan Jenkins up in Frog heaven smiling.
But are the Longhorns responsible for the ever rapidly changing face of the college football landscape?
I would say no.
UT is like a bank or the federal reserve. They have so much money it is ridiculous. Their presence in a conference gives that conference immediate financial cache so to speak.
Texas in football the past decade in my mind along with UCLA, USC, and Michigan has been a major underacheiver on the field. I’d love to put these four in a Final Four and see who would emerge as the champion right now.
Throw out Colorado leaving the Big 12 to join the PAC 12. Re-insert Texas A&M, Nebraska, and Missouri back into the Big 12 and slide Texas over to the SEC these past ten years in your mind.
What would be different about the current face of the college football landscape except the best league in the country would have even more financial clout?
Texas A&M and Missouri were not strong enough when in the Big 12 to take out OU. Nebraska was allowed to play in the league’s weaker North division and didn’t do all that much and was in decline. Tell me how many combined Big 12 championships A&M, Missouri and Nebraska won in football in that Big 12. What would be different?
Not much except OU wouldn’t be as strong because they would have lost the Red River Rivalry as a critical recruiting tool. BY going to the SEC there will be no more 11:00am kickoffs for the Red River War. It will be a 2:30pm kickoff. Every high school football player in Texas will be watching. So while the world is for sale every day and money rules there were other cosiderations for Joe C.
The SEC is run like a very effective business with a methodical plan to in essence rule college football in totality at some point if not already.
Simply observe how the SEC manages Covid issues and getting thru a season versus the Big 12. There would not have been a college football season if not for the SEC last season and I would say with surging Covid numbers once again this season might be a repeat in that regard.
Did Texas wreck the Big 12?
I don’t think so. What happened in my mind is that the SEC and the Big Ten adapted to the doctrine that Money and Marketing Rule and have emerged as the power brokers.
OU would have loved to have been accepted to the Big Ten. What OU did in effect by joining the SEC was hookup it’s remarkable football brand with a bank and join the best run, best marketed football conference in the country.
And that is exactly what Joe C and the OU new president should have done as fiduciaries of the university and the state.
Jay Hartzell a John Marshall Bear running the Texas National Bank…that’s cool. It just goes to show how having some diversity in your unbringing isn’t a bad thing. It socializes you and makes you an adaptable human who sees the world from multiple prisms.