David Boren wants 12 in Big 12; no Bevo TV and a championship game

[badger]

Can't believe you guys aren't talking about this yet. All three, mind you. Not a championship game then visit the other two down the road --- all at once. 12 teams in the Big 12! No Longhorn Network! A Big 12 football championship game! Now!

http://www.tulsaworld.com/sportsextra/johnehoover/john-e-hoover-david-boren-tired-of-big-s-little/article_cd7816c7-5571-5ebe-9392-3911e9337f83.html


“I think if we try to do it piecemeal, we’re just gonna kind of end up with just a Band-Aid on top,” Boren said. “I think we need a comprehensive plan to strengthen the conference and give it equal status with the other Power 5 conferences.”

The entire Q&A is here:
http://www.tulsaworld.com/blogs/sports/johnehoover/q-a-with-ou-president-david-boren/article_d5e9b844-5fa0-5f4c-98f6-357abd37e19e.html

At least someone in this conference is trying to be a leader

[rock on sooner]

Without even reading the Tulsa World, makes sense to me.
Get a Florida school and Cincy, two 6 team divisions, make
sure the OU-TX game is every year, (I've never seen the LHN)
set up a championship game the same weekend as all the
others and ROCK N ROLL!!! BOOMER!

[yermom]

Ten team championship games seems just dumb.

The TCU/Baylor year i guess it makes sense, but at the same time, it makes it harder to get multiple new years six games for the conference since the two teams are guaranteed to have already played each other

There are already too many losses going around with 9 conference games.

[tycat947]

It totally makes sense what he's saying. Adding a championship game to a 10 team conference alone isn't going to change all the media/fan chatter about the Big 12 being disadvantaged, no matter how untrue it may be. The biggest problem with Big 12, besides LHN, is 2 private church schools in Texas. In spite of their recent improvement and stadium renovations/replacement, they are still the 2 smallest stadiums in the conference and I'd almost bet they are near the bottom in TV ratings as well. Two teams from Texas is MAX all this conference needs! We need population expansion, not population overlap!

[Tear Down This Wall]

He's an idiot.

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

Ouachita Baptist and Houston are available, I think. The LHN will fold if someone asks them to, fershure. Peace of cake! Why didn't we think of that sooner?

[SoonerMarkVA]

I have always liked Boren, but he's the president who cried wolf. There have been two times that he's stood up and proclaimed a stand, and both times whorn flicked him, he went right back to his seat and towed the company line. He made OU look incredibly weak when he clearly attempted to go to the Pac-12 without whorn and let the Pac publicly, casually dismiss him, and OU.

There are two conditions that mean he will never be able to carry through on his implications:

* He's unwilling to take on the Oklahoma politics of telling OSU to get bent
* He's unwilling to cut the cord with whorn, making us whorn's toady

Until he's willing to say screw y'all to *both* the orange plagues in our conference, we have no action we can take to back up the veiled (and even not-so-veiled) threats. If he let both of those things go, we could likely be in the SEC by 2017. But he just won't, and I don't agree with the reasons.

[Sabanball]

He's an idiot.

I agree.

[tycat947]

I have always liked Boren, but he's the president who cried wolf. There have been two times that he's stood up and proclaimed a stand, and both times whorn flicked him, he went right back to his seat and towed the company line. He made OU look incredibly weak when he clearly attempted to go to the Pac-12 without whorn and let the Pac publicly, casually dismiss him, and OU.

There are two conditions that mean he will never be able to carry through on his implications:

* He's unwilling to take on the Oklahoma politics of telling OSU to get bent
* He's unwilling to cut the cord with whorn, making us whorn's toady

Until he's willing to say screw y'all to *both* the orange plagues in our conference, we have no action we can take to back up the veiled (and even not-so-veiled) threats. If he let both of those things go, we could likely be in the SEC by 2017. But he just won't, and I don't agree with the reasons.

In spite of what people think, Boren's FIRST and most important obligation is to the University, not the football program nor athletic department. They are usually great exposure for the University however. Financially, right now, we are making just as much money as any other school in the country, with expenses much lower than they would be in PAC12, B1G or SEC. If we left on our own and joined another conference without osu and state withheld all funding from OU (getting close now!), we'd have to become a private university. We'd have to up tuition to $20K per year (versus about $7K per year for in-state tuition). Think about what that would do with enrollment. Probably lose about 10K students almost overnight. There's not a Power 5 conference (or any other for that matter) that wouldn't accept OU on their own if we asked. There's a helluva lot more to the situation than just packing up your football team and changing conferences. If it were, we'd have done it already.

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

The state of OK is SO protective of LosuR, (both govt. institutions and the private sector) that separating OU from orange aggy would be a tricky and difficult task, but to improve our situation in football it does need to be done.

[yermom]

I'm not really uncomfortable with being tied to Texas and OSU

I'm not sure what our season would look like without either of them

[Tear Down This Wall]

I have always liked Boren, but he's the president who cried wolf. There have been two times that he's stood up and proclaimed a stand, and both times whorn flicked him, he went right back to his seat and towed the company line. He made OU look incredibly weak when he clearly attempted to go to the Pac-12 without whorn and let the Pac publicly, casually dismiss him, and OU.

There are two conditions that mean he will never be able to carry through on his implications:

* He's unwilling to take on the Oklahoma politics of telling OSU to get bent
* He's unwilling to cut the cord with whorn, making us whorn's toady

Until he's willing to say screw y'all to *both* the orange plagues in our conference, we have no action we can take to back up the veiled (and even not-so-veiled) threats. If he let both of those things go, we could likely be in the SEC by 2017. But he just won't, and I don't agree with the reasons.

Agree on all. Remember in 2011 when he and Castiglione had Stoops go out in front of the media and say that we'd be fine if we left the conference and never played Texas again, even out of conference?

Then, the two weeks after that, Pac-12 turns us down without Texas...and, he and Castiglione let an invitation to the SEC go to Mizzou.

Yeah...you've got a lot of pull, Boren. Lot of pull.

[swardboy]

Well shoot, let's just go independent. All the D-I schools would schedule us to strengthen their OOC power.