TCU’s best-case scenario if Texas and Oklahoma bolt for the SEC | Opinion
Anyone with any knowledge of TCU’s history recognizes the current feeling of dread that permeates the entire school.
It’s all happening again.
TCU officials have no desire to speak on the record about the potential move of Texas and Oklahoma bolting the Big 12 for the SEC, because, ultimately, their voices don’t carry enough weight to make any difference. And so both TCU chancellor Victor Boschini and athletic director Jeremiah Donati declined to comment.
There isn’t much either of them can say other than the obvious: “Please, don’t let this be true.”
Big 12 AD’s and presidents were scheduled to meet at 5 p.m. Thursday, where Texas and Oklahoma are thought to make their intentions official. Earlier in the day, one high-ranking source put it in starker terms saying, “This is done.”
Neither Texas nor Oklahoma was on the call.
One source said much of the discussion focused on why the two schools wanted to leave in the first place.
Only a small number of people knew about these discussions, and Texas A&M was deliberately kept out of the talks.
Legislators from around the state, notably Republican congressman Dustin Burrows in Lubbock, plan to file motions to stop this.
“The TX Legislature appropriates millions of dollars to our public institutions of higher ed every session. When tax dollars are involved, there should be zero allowance for secrecy, especially when it comes to far-reaching and impactful decisions by our universities,” Burrows wrote in a Tweet on Thursday.
“Any discussions surrounding UT’s potential exit from the Big XII should be completely transparent and thoroughly vetted rather than held behind closed doors between big donors and administrators.”
Next on the docket ... better candy from the Easter Bunny.
Plenty of TCU alums and fans remember the end of the Southwest Conference, but there are few current administrators who were here when the Big 12 originally formed and left the Horned Frogs out in 1996.
Between 1996 and 2011, TCU was a member of three different conferences — the Western Athletic Conference, Mountain West, Conference USA — before it landed the coveted spot in the Big 12. That invitation was the confirmation that TCU had made it all the way back from the dead.
No school in the U.S. worked harder to reach its current status, and yet they all know how much it can all change if their affiliation changes from a P5 to a Group of Five.
TCU is considerably more valuable when its directly affiliated with Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio State, USC, Notre Dame and every other member of college football’s Power 5.
Entering its 10th season in the Big 12, TCU did everything it could to be a quality member of a Power 5 conference, but hoping that its former athletic director was going to somehow prevent all this was happening this was not one of them.
One of the quiet thoughts circulating around TCU was that when Chris Del Conte left his position as TCU’s athletic director to accept the same job at the University of Texas in 2017 was he would “take care of” TCU should conference re-alignment ever occur.
Del Conte is loyal, and he has always expressed gratitude to Donati’s father, who helped start his career as a graduate assistant at Washington State.
Del Conte hired the younger Donati to be an assistant at TCU, and groomed him to become an AD. Beyond that, there is not much Del Conte can do about this.
His first responsibility is to the University of Texas.
TCU is in a far better position, and more attractive, in 2021 than it was in 1996, but the era is different. We live in an era of big banks, of mergers, of cuts and consolidation.
With Texas and Oklahoma leaving the Big 12, it will essentially turn the conference into a slightly better version of the American Athletic Conference, which features the likes of Houston, SMU, Cincinnati, South Florida.
All of those schools have begged for an invite to the Big 12.
If Texas and Oklahoma leave, adding a Houston, Memphis or a Cincinnati will not keep this league alive. Neither will turning the Big 12 back into the Big 8.
The Big 12 will die just like the Big East did back in 2013.
The best case scenario for TCU is that the Pac-12, Big 10 and ACC follow the SEC’s lead and expand to 16 members.
This is likely more fantasy than reality, but such potential expansion would create a total of eight spots between those three leagues — four in the Pac-12, two in the Big 10 and two in the ACC.
The ACC’s half-marriage to Notre Dame would complicate things considerably.
Face it, Texas and Oklahoma were always the pair that kept the Big 12 viable. And every other school in the league knew it.
Bevo and Boomer are electing to take their toys to the SEC, and no one else will be invited.
Maybe history won’t repeat itself, but if you’re a TCU fan or alum with any memory at all your greatest fear is that it’s happening all over again.
This story was originally published July 22, 2021 at 5:04 PM.
