With the current stranglehold on Texas talent, the SEC barbarians (as you call them) are much more of a threat to the UT/OU recruiting golden goose. With a move to the SEC, A&M has the potential to differentiate themselves with in-state recruits by providing closer access to the best football conference in the nation. But you guys will still have the clear edge on all the state’s water polo prospects. Good luck with that and let us know if you run into any good tofu barbque joints.

You dumb rednecks might like water polo too if you did not keep trying to play it on horseback.Let’s see # 1 at both football and the number of marrages between 13 year old cousins.

It won’t be the best football conference in 2012 with the new PAC-16. With the west-coast expansion of possible recruits heading to Texas and Oklahoma due to the lack of scholarships at USC, the SEC will become second best.

Lets hope Texas A&M comes to its senses. The SEC will spit them out while they recruit Texas which is exactly what the longhorns don’t want. Why open that pandora’s box for the SEC. A&M should follow brethren from the Big 12 and reap the new financial benefits that will ultimately come and soon. With USC going down hard the California and Arizona recruiting is fertile for the new schools. No wonder Coach Bob is looking forward to going west. If A&M stays
stupid then lets hope the Pac Ten offers Utah and not Baylor. Utah is an up and
coming school with many viewers in Salt Lake City-and the state of Utah. Either
way works but you gotta hope A&M wakes up and smells the coffee!!!

Just wanted to say something about conference re-alignment. What makes the most sense for the economy of our state is going to the SEC. Geographically speaking, what conference is going to travel better, the SEC, or the PAC 10? Which conference would potentially bring in more revenue to the state of Oklahoma? The answer is clear. It is the SEC. Does anyone really think that Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, USC, UCLA, CAL, Arizona State, Arizona, and Stanford will travel out to Oklahoma for a game? Some will. What about the fans from the SEC? Proximity wise, LSU, Arkansas, Alabama, Auburn, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, they are all closer and probably travel better as a whole. If our Universities are state ran institutions, they should be on the look out for the local economy as well as the University’s well being. Take a look at the following. These numbers are from Mapquest.

DISTANCE AND TRAVEL TIME TO SEC SCHOOLS-(DRIVE TIME)

Norman to Columbia, SC-1067.09 miles (16 hours,39 mins)
Norman to Gainesville, FL-1129 miles (18 hours,07 mins)
Norman to Athens, GA-925.93 miles (14 hours,39 mins)
Norman to Lexington, KY-853.77 miles (13 hours,05 mins)
Norman to Nashville, TN-683.97 miles (10 hours,26 mins)
Norman to Knoxville, TN-863.05 miles (13 hours,11 mins)
Norman to Tuscaloosa, AL-701.06 miles (10 hours,58 mins)
Norman to Fayetteville, AR-243.52 miles(3 hours, 48 mins)
Norman to Auburn, AL-816 miles (12 hours, 54 mins)
Norman to Baton Rouge, LA-630.98 miles (9 hours, 52 mins)
Norman to Starkville, MS-651.88 miles (10 hours, 02 mins)
Norman to Oxford, MS-556 miles (8 hours, 33 mins)

DISTANCE AND TRAVEL TIME TO PAC 10 SCHOOLS-(DRIVE TIME)

Norman to Tempe, AZ-969.89 miles (14 hours, 38 mins)
Norman to Tucson, AZ-1009.01 miles (14 hours 43 mins)
Norman to Berkely, CA-1643.81 miles (24 hours, 09 mins)
Norman to Eugene, OR-1958.55 miles (29 hours, 45 mins)
Norman to Corvallis, OR-1957.67 miles (29 hours 55 mins)
Norman to Stanford, CA-1625.17 miles (23 hours, 56 mins)
Norman to UCLA, LA, CA-1347.61 miles (19 hours, 36 mins)
Norman to USC, LA, CA-1347.61 miles (19 hours, 36 mins)
Norman to Seattle, WA-2017.09 miles (29 hours, 37 mins)
Norman to Pullman, WA-1836.76 miles (26 hours, 54 mins)

Accumulatively speaking, The SEC is 5243.31 miles closer to The University Of Oklahoma than the PAC 10. This has to be taken into consideration by both state schools. Which conference would travel best to Norman? The answer is no doubt the SEC. Let’s not just follow Texas blindly.

David,

If you look at your first two Pac 10 schools they are the closest. To be honest that isn’t bad when you only go once a year. You would then add one school on the coast. Your travel wouldn’t be that bad. It would be a lot better than going to Ames, IA or even Lincoln, NE. I personally like the 8 team division that we would be in better than what we have now. More competitive and more money.

Spot on Austin Ag. This post is laughable. It’s like Mr. Tramel thinks we are wrong to what? Consider our options? Of course UT and OU don’t want to lose the Aggies. Bottom line: the Aggies do what they calculate to be in the best interest of their program, not UT or OU. He’s got his opinion, fair enough, but it seems to be derived from the wrong perspective so it’s irrelevant.

Hey, Texas Aggie, guess who benefits the most by you going to the SEC, UT. UT still gets their choice of recruits. Any improvement A&M gets by going east is likely nullified by gains by the SEC West and UT’s conference brethren all take hits with the increased recruiting competition. So A&M while possibly better doesn’t improve its place in the standings and any lose in talent for UT is not nearly as significant as the hits OU, Tech etc take. UT thanks you for improving their chances at getting to the BCS championship game. BTW you’re losing recruits right now to the likes of OU, OSU and Tech. How is adding 5 or 6 other national brand schools going to help you acquire talent?

I am watching the live Board of Regents meeting of Nebraska. They mention “civility” as one reason for leaving the Big 12. Interesting.

Tramel as usual you’re dead on! A & M needs UT just as bad as OU, OSU and Tech need UT. A & M should take a long hard look at Missouri’s posturing and see what it got them! Make no mistake, this PAC 16 Conference is going to be tough! A 6-6 record might be a good record in this conference. No one wants mediocrity, but if you’re not competing at the top level playing teams who actually have bullets week in and week out, well that’s where football conferences fail. A great football conference is one dedicated to the sport of football. There are some weak links in the SEC. Sure they have the big five of LSU, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida but beyond that the other school are mid-majors like A & M with Arkansas, Auburn, and the Mississippi schools. One could argue that Vanderbilt is more pathetic than Baylor. Kentucky and South Carolina seldom make any noise in football. My message to A & M is don’t get greedy. Be careful what you wish for! This kind of posturing is what got Missouri in trouble!

One thing I’ve learned from all this is that it’s easier to build a conference taking in teams than it is trying to kick a team out of your own conference. The SEC could make itself a stronger conference if it would rid itself of Vanderbilt and trade the ACC Kentucky and South Carolina for Florida State and Miami. I mean isn’t that what it’s really coming to??? The best football conferences are the ones with the best teams, the schools dedicated to the sport of football and the teams that are the largest revenue generators. It’s not enough to keep up anymore, you have to stay ahead of the game!

Look at all the SEC teams already. The majority of all their stars are already from Texas. If Texas A&M goes to the SEC they will be able to recruit those kids who want to go to the superior confrence and get more exposure to stay at home and go there.

Also you say its going to ruin A&M’s chance of ever getting good at football again. If they follow UT they will never have a chance to get good at football again. If they follow UT they won’t have anything different to offer these kids than UT will and any athlete looking for the exposure to get to the next level will choose UT everytime.

SEC is a much more viable offer. You really think people like Bill Byrne and Gene Stallings are going to be able to sit in the same room with people from Stanford and Cal Berkley? The liberal longhorns will love it there, but not the Aggies wouldn’t last long. If they go to the PAC 10 they’ll be out of there in five years.

It would do the gaggies some good to interface with Cal so they could expand their very closed minds and narrow views of society and see there is diversity of opinions, which is healthy. Also,if you knew anything about Stanford,you would realize it is a moderatly conservative highly rated business school and definitely not at all like Cal.

Texas A&M’s best option is the SEC. In the first place, they’ll make more money. The SEC already has a guaranteed payout of more than $17 million from ESPN/CBS, and that would be re-negotiated upward with the addition of the Texas market. Plus SEC teams retain the rights to set up their own sports networks, and they keep one TV game per year as pay-per-view. This is netting schools like Florida and Georgia and extra $10 million a year. Big 10 teams don’t retain these rights–they belong to the Big Ten, and the proposed Pac 16 network would operate in the same way.

Millions more would be saved by not paying for minor sports teams to travel to faraway places like Pullman–and expensive places like LA and the Bay Area. Altogether, A&M would expect to net upwards of $30 million a year without breaking a sweat. Any Pac16 revenue is strictly speculative. A&M athletics has big money problems right now. In fact, money woes are at the root of many of their recent problems. Join the SEC and these problems evaporate immediately.

The point above about SEC teams traveling well is a good one. Kyle Field holds about 80,000 now. With proven draws like Alabama, Arkansas, and LSU, you could easily expand to an SEC-sized 100,000 or so.

And as far as recruiting is concerned, A&M should be better off, not worse. The Aggies can tell recruits that they’ll be playing on ESPN and CBS during the day or at prime time, not 10 pm or midnight on the Pac16 channel. And they can play in the toughest and most exciting league in the country and stay close enough that Mama and Daddy can get to most of the games. Not to mention their girlfriends. As far as the SEC invading Texas is concerned, what is stopping them anyway? You can bet that if they can pull a top recruit out of Texas or Timbuktu, they’ll do it if they can.

And then there’s the best reason of all to pick the SEC: stability. The Pac16 is going to be a group of culturally disparate and geographically distant schools put together for one reason and one reason only: to get as many TV bucks as possible. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. And following Texas? Is it not abundantly clear that UT will do whatever it thinks will give it the most control and the largest amount of cash? It might very well be the case that in a few years Texas will shop itself around again and leave A&M and the rest to fend for themselves. Maybe they’ll put together their own network and go independent like Notre Dame. If you ask me, I think that’s definitely something they’re considering and as soon as they think it’s to their interest to do it, they will. Why should Texas A&M accept the fact that they have to do what their bitterest rival decides? If they’re ever going to move out of Texas’s shadow, now is the time.

And while I’m on the subject, all of the above applies–in spades–to OU. If Castiglione and Boren have any brains, they’ll be working out a deal with Mike Slive right now. Or maybe the problem is they’ve already tried and the SEC won’t take them.

Of course there is one reason to move to the Pac16: if you’re afraid of the competition in the SEC.

You know what…I believe that if Texas A & M feels strongly enough that they should be a part of the SEC then sobeit! No great loss for the other four schools being courted by the PAC 10. In fact bringing in BYU is a far greater prize than A & M. A & M won’t even make a dent in Texas recruiting! In fact one could almost say the A & M is so stupid that they offered themselves the “Death Penalty”. Look what happened to SMU!

And while we’re on the subject it mystifies me why Oklahoma and Oklahoma State are letting Texas call the shots. If DeLoss Dodds says boo, the folks in Norman and Stillwater pee in their pants. It’s humiliating to see them grovel. Actually I can understand why the Oke State is willing to settle for crumbs. But Oklahoma??? You can bet that if UT joins up with the Pac10 it will be because they will call the shots in that league just as they always did in the Big I + XI Other Guys Who Know Who’s Really in Charge. If you have a chance to join a league where everyone is treated pretty much equally (like the Big 10, SEC, etc), why would you not do it and get some self-respect back? OU’s old rival Nebraska saw a chance to do that and moved decisively to make that happen. Why hasn’t OU learned the same lesson?

Bob, the Pac10 is not going to admit BYU. It’s a conservative religious school (much like Baylor, in fact). Conservative, religious people are not welcome in the Pac10. If you don’t believe me, you can look up the comments of Cal’s chancellor. If they don’t get A&M, the Pac15 might have to take Utah. Utah is also too conservative, but for purposes of the big TV contract they need 16, so they’ll hold their noses and do it if they have to. Or maybe they’ll take pity on Kansas. But no BYU.

do the math……compare the number of tv sets in Texas to the number in OK.That is why OU will follow Texas where ever they go.It is the right thing for OU to do. Oklahoma is a small population state,period.Stop thinking this is about competition or rep of a conference or the rep of the sports teams or about rivalries or the cultures,as it is only about the money and the size of the tv markets.

The research on the drivetime to the various schools in the SEc and PAC-10 is interesting. However, I’m not planning to drive to any of those schools, except maybe AZ where I’d spend a week with friends. I lived in AZ for 30 years before moving back to OK in 2008. It is pretty easy to fly around in PAC-10 country unless you want to go to Pullman, Washington, which I never plan on doing.

Phoenix is a major hub for USA Airways and Southwest
Denver is a major hub for several airlines.
LAX and several other airports make it easy to fly into.
SF is a major hub.
Portland and Seattle are major cities with good airline service.
Tucson, Austin, and OKC have decent if not good airline service.

Now compare the SEC

Fayetteville, AR, Tuscaloosa and Auburn, AL, Knoxville, TN, Athens, Georgia, Lexington, KY, South Carolina, aren’t really near a hub.

Gainesville, FL, and Baton Rouge are near hubs.

So if you want to go to a football game in the SEC chances are you will have do drive a considerable distance if you are coming from out of state. While in the PAC-10 you probably don’t have to drive more than 30 miles in most cases.

So when it comes to road games I’d much prefer the PAC-16.

I graduated from Army flight school in Alabama in 1967, I’ve only been back in the deep south once since then to Charlotte, NC on business. I realized then it had been 40 years since I’d been in the deep south, and frankly hadn’t missed it one bit.

It might be better for A&M to go with the rest to the Pac-10. Or it might not. But I don’t think A&M is posturing. I think that there is a debate within the Aggie power structure. The opportunity to escape from Texas’ shadow, and to join the strongest and richest conference are big selling points for going to the SEC.

Personally, I like the idea of Texas A & M joining the SEC.Oklahoma too, to that matter. Without question, it will be a tougher league, followed by more rapid fans. Why Texas has not proposed a four-team merger(UT, A & M, OU and Missouri) to the SEC is a little surprising. It may come down to competition. It may have to do with control. But, with or without Texas, I love a 14 team SEC, with A & M and OU or even a 16 team SEC with the likes of Missouri and Florida State joining the Aggies and Sooners. Any way you want to cut it, the SEC is still going to be the “kingpin” football conference. Taking up the SEC’s offer might be marginally risking for Texas A & M. But the benefits far outweigh the risks.