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Until the University of Miami and its football player perk-happy boosters assumed the position for their NCAA spanking this week, sports’ scolds had their sights set firmly on Texas A&M. The reason? That school’s audacious plot to leave the shrinking Big 12 high and dry for college football’s marquee Southeastern Conference (SEC). If and when it flies southeast, Texas A&M is going to be more vulnerable than a PETA activist at an NRA convention. Before then, the Aggies should really stop and take a long look at the home pastures around them.
From “America’s Team,” the Dallas Cowboys, in the NFL, to repeat NCAA gridiron champions, to high school powerhouses with $60 million stadiums (complete with naming rights and luxury suites) and media deals to match, all things outsized in football seem to begin and end deep in the heart of Texas.
Friday Night Lights was not set in Georgia.
But sometimes the next big thing isn’t the best thing—as the University of Texas’s Longhorn Network, and its burnt-orange shower of consequences, is beginning to prove.
Fallout from the Longhorn Network
From the pros to forward-thinking high school programs, media rights deals are front and center in football programs’ arms race to obtain competitive advantage. That knowledge was front and center for University of Texas officials when they partnered with ESPN to launch the Longhorn Network, which will go live in less than two weeks. Indicative of the complexity behind the launch, the Dallas Morning News noted last weekend that “not a single cable, satellite, or telecom carrier in the state has signed on.”
One major obstacle in the Longhorn Network’s launch is controversy surrounding ESPN’s announcing that the Longhorn channel would broadcast Texas high school games in addition to UT sporting events, potentially giving the school a major leg up in recruiting. After outcry by Texas A&M and other schools in the region, including UT’s arch rival Oklahoma, the Big 12 Board of Directors earlier this month approved a recommendation by the conference’s athletic directors for a one-year moratorium on any high school broadcasts by Big 12 members. The NCAA followed suit last week, ruling that no high school games would be allowed to be aired on school or conference networks nationwide.
As the Longhorn Network’s primary backer, ESPN obviously has a major stake in both Texas A&M’s possible departure and in the high school ruling. If Texas A&M bolts for the SEC, that conference would likely be able to renegotiate its current rights deal with ESPN for a bigger number: More inventory equals more money. The cable network also has an existing arrangement with the Big 12 for an exclusive negotiating window for that conference’s media rights within the next two years—that deal could be in jeopardy as well. As the Kansas City Star observes, the normally astute ESPN would have “essentially paid $300 million for something (the Longhorn Network) that will force it to pay millions more for one thing it already bought (SEC broadcasting rights) and lose something else it already paid for (Big 12 rights).”
(The Big 12 spreads its sports broadcast rights around—in April, the conference also signed a 13-year, $1.17 billion contract with Fox Sports.)
Not one to lose its forward momentum, let alone its edge, ESPN this week announced that this fall it plans to launch up to a dozen college-specific websites that will focus on high school recruiting, to better compete with 24/7 Sports and Yahoo!’s Rivals. The first two websites to go up will cover the University of Southern California and … the University of Texas.
Aggies Toe the Line—For Now
Texas A&M is only slightly appeased after the Big 12 and NCAA’s ruling that UT can’t use its Longhorn Network as one more line in its pitch to star high school recruits around the region. Even though it is UT’s biggest in-state rival, Texas A&M has long been stuck in the Longhorns’ shadow—the dynamic even made its way into the Broadway and on-screen hit Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, when Miss Mona’s girls at the Chicken Ranch bemoan having to entertain the Aggies after A&M defeats the Longhorns in the schools’ annual Thanksgiving football game.
