Here’s how much money Bob Bowlsby expects Big 12 teams to lose without OU and Texas
It won’t be easy to replace the TV revenue of flagship members Oklahoma and Texas when they depart for the SEC, but the Big 12 Conference may not miss out on as much cash as some have suggested.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said on Monday that each remaining school in the league can expect to earn about $14 million less per year without the Sooners and Longhorns.
Bowlsby made that comment while speaking at a political hearing on the future of college sports in Texas.
How did he land on that number? Bowlsby said Oklahoma and Texas are currently responsible for bringing in about half of the Big 12’s yearly TV revenue, and the league distributed $28 million in TV money to each of its schools in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic.
The Big 12 distributed nearly $40 million in total revenue to each of its members that year, with the largest chunk of the money coming from TV.
Some have suggested that remaining Big 12 schools such as Kansas and K-State would lose between $20 million-$30 million per year without Texas and Oklahoma driving up the conference’s value.
But Bowlsby provided a more optimistic number and suggested that the league’s remaining members are best served by uniting and trying to rebuild the conference through expansion.
“We believe the eight of us staying together is the best approach in the near term,” Bowlsby said.
Bowlsby said there is currently no timetable for expansion efforts, and he has not yet reached out to any schools about the possibility of joining the conference.
A few other highlights from Bowlsby’s public comments:
Playing nice with ESPN
Bowlsby sent a “cease-and-desist” letter to ESPN last week and accused the TV network of conspiring with at least one other conference to try and break up the Big 12 for its own financial gain.
He later called ESPN’s an act of “deception” and ESPN fired back with a letter of its own denying those accusations.
It was an ugly back-and-forth that appeared headed for the court room. But Bowlsby said no one in the Big 12 will continue to publicly criticize its primary TV partner.
“We have agreed to not escalate this publicly,” Bowlsby said. “It’s in neither party’s best interest to do so.”
Take that Maryland, Rutgers
Bowlsby had an interesting opinion on why this round of conference realignment is different from what we have seen in the past.
Spoiler alert: Fans of Maryland and Rutgers won’t like it.
“The difference between this one and any of the others is they’ve come off the top of the food chain,” Bowlsby said. “The others that have moved have typicaly been the Rutgers and Marylands that were down in the ranks.”
The Big 12 has dealt with realignment before. It lost Colorado and Nebraska in 2010 and then Texas A&M and Missouri a year later. The conference survived those defections by adding TCU and West Virginia, but replacing national brands like Texas and Oklahoma won’t be as simple.
What about playoff expansion?
College football appeared ready to expand its playoff format to 12 teams earlier this summer, but it is unclear if those plans are still in the works.
Bowlsby, who was part of a four-member team that created the new model, said much has changed over the past month.
“The tectonic plates have shifted since the recommendation was made,” he said Monday. “There’s a lot of chatter about people not being excited to move forward given what’s happened in the last two weeks.”
This story was originally published August 2, 2021 at 3:24 PM with the headline "Here’s how much money Bob Bowlsby expects Big 12 teams to lose without OU and Texas."