Texas A&M explored every option, including going to the Pac-10 and SEC, but in the end, it was decided that the Big 12 will stay together.
“Texas A&M is a proud member of the Big 12 Conference and will continue to be affiliated with the conference in the future,” Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin said in a statement. “As Athletics Director Bill Byrne and I have stated on numerous occasions, our hope and desire was for the Big 12 to continue. We are committed to the Big 12 and its success today and in the future.”
Loftin said both his and Athletic Director Bill Byrne’s original “desire” was to keep the Big 12 Conference together, although he said “the Big 12 is certainly not what it was” in a statement earlier this week.
Texas, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State also agreed to remain in the conference.
According to sources cited by Chip Brown of OrangeBloods.com, Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe has a plan in place to bump television revenue up from between $7 million and $10 million to $20 million for Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma, while the other seven teams would receive somewhere between $14 million and $17 million, which would begin in 2012.
Texas, however, would be able topursue their own network, as would every team in the conference. The predicted amount of revenue from the Texas network is valued from $3 million to $5 million.
With only 10 teams in the foreseeable future, a conference championship would be temporarily scrapped since the NCAA mandates that a conference needs 12 teams for a conference championship. The retracted conference would play every team in a nine-game conference schedule, like the design of the PAC-10.
This is a 180-degree movement from reports coming out earlier on Monday, when sources cited by ESPN.com’s Joe Schad reported that Beebe’s last-chance plan for salvaging the conference ranged from having “zero” chance of success to “very unlikely.”
But the ball started rolling earlier today when the Longhorns rejected an offer to join the Pac-10, as confirmed by Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott. Oklahoma State, which had a Board of Regents meeting scheduled for Wednesday, canceled as well.
However, nothing is official yet. No deals have been signed, and according to Brown, Texas A&M still has an offer from the SEC, if they want it.