Aggies To Begin SEC Play In 2012

Following the 2011-2012 school year, Texas A&M will change athletic conferences, and officially become a member of the Southeastern Conference. The Aggies will be joined by texas university, University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State University in their move to the SEC, making the SEC the first official 16-team superconference. Which programs will be moved to the SEC East and SEC West to create competitive balance in those two divisions is a discussion for another time. The key element to all of this move is television rights.

The future television contract the Zombie10 committed to with Dan Beebe on Tuesday doesn't take effect until after the 2011-'12 season is over, which is when Fox Sports Net's current agreement with the Big 12 ends. The Fox Sports Net contract is the key to everything, because under our current contract with ESPN/ABC, ESPN gets first choice to 18 conference football games every year; after ESPN makes their selections, FSN owns the rights to ALL remaining conference football games. FSN will sometimes sublicense those games to ESPN to show on their network of channels, or to Versus so they can show them. Once this contract ends, so does FSN's ownership of all Big 12 games not owned by ESPN, which is key because ESPN/ABC carry most of the SEC telecasts, along with CBS. Texas A&M, Oklahoma, texas, and OSU can move to the SEC, and expect ESPN to renegotiate the $2.25 billion deal they just signed in 2008.

The new deal for an FSN extension to begin after the 2011-'12 season isn't worth the breath that was wasted at the press conferences to address it. As part of the extension,  all Big 12 schools will give up their third-tier TV rights, which means any football, basketball, baseball, et al. games not shown by ESPN or FSN. These third-tier TV rights are part of what make up the backbone of conference television networks, and is exactly what texas didn't want to give up to form a Big 12 television network. These third-tier TV rights are also what texas used as part of a poison pill to kill the Pac-16 deal when they realized they had other options, and didn't want to go there anymore. texas isn't willing to give up their third-tier TV rights now, and they aren't going to be willing to give them up in 2012 either. Once A&M, texas, OU, and OSU move to the SEC, though, they'll be able to sell these third-tier television rights to local television stations to increase their television revenue, something SEC schools already do. Arkansas made over $6 million last year off their third-tier TV rights, and I believe Georgia made over $10 million, so the ability to sell these rights, combined with the SEC's already lucrative television contract, means television revenue in the SEC dwarfs every other conference, including the Big Ten.

In the SEC, texas would be able to set up its own television network, something Oklahoma is already interested in doing, and something A&M has already begun doing. A&M broadcasts their third-tier TV television on Aggies All-Access online through CBS Sports (see another SEC connection here?), and is actually the best situated of all Big 12 schools to start their own network, it just isn't financially feasible at this time. With third-tier TV in the SEC including football games against other SEC schools, it will become more financially feasible.

The Zombie10 commitment the remaining Big 12 schools made this week is really just a space-filler; texas is tryng to distance itself from comments it made earlier about them not being an academic fit for the SEC, and the two years between now and the end of the FSN contract will give them that time. texas was looking at joining the Pac-10 because their athletic department saw the potential of a conference television network that combined television markets in California, Washington, and Oregon with television markets in Texas. However, the move by A&M to join the SEC threw a monkey wrench into that plan, though; A&M's move and the dissatisfaction of a contingent of the texas fanbase that didn't want to travel to Pullman, WA or Corvallis, OR to watch their team play at 9:30 PM CT for a primetime game blindsided the texas athletic department. This caused texas to to re-evaluate their options, and they ultimately decided to accept the Zombie10 deal, and give themselves time to work themselves back into the SEC. The two years between now and when the FSN deal expires also gives them plenty of time to try to get their sports network up and running, so they'll be able to reap the benefits of their third-tier TV rights when they enter the SEC.

The unfortunate part of the past two weeks has been A&M's leadership and their complete lack of vision; I'm sure they don't foresee that we're going to be in the SEC in two years anyway, and joining now would give us a two year head start in recruiting, so we could hit the ground running in football, ready to compete immediately in the conference. Joining the SEC now would also give us a two-year advantage on texas in recruiting, because we would know where we're going, and be able to differentiate ourselves from texas in recruiting. We would be the program headed to the best football conference in the nation, while texas would be headed to the Pac-10. I would have loved to see texas try to sell recruits on joining the Pac-10 while we'd be selling the SEC. Unfortunately, we're both going to be joining the SEC together in 2013, and we'll both be selling the same opportunity to recruits, so we've lost any potential advantage we would have had, all because we have imbeciles at the highest levels of the A&M administration.

A&M will begin SEC competition in 2013; you heard it here first.