“@ChipBrownOB: Texas wants to hold the Big 12 together. Hard to believe, but true. In intense discussions with OU. May or may not work out.”
Wow. Shocking.
My bet? It works out, and OU gets some sort of concession.
Part of the concession needs to be new leadership in the league office. We desperately need a galvanizing force that from this point going forward that is going to provide some vision, some aggressiveness, and some confidence amongst our conference institutions. Right now we have none of the above.
The perception has to change that this a dead conference.
If OU comes back to the table, we need to start this conference over from scratch. Tear it down and rebuild it all levels. Replace Beebe, clean house, and restructure it all.
The other part of the concessions are some legitimate contracts for membership. None of this good faith moving forward bullshit so we can avoid the same Texas A&M scenario from playing out every single offseason without real repercussions. You're in or your out. And if you're in, it's a longterm commitment.
I agree with everything you just said.
Look, at some point, we need a Big 12 Network. If you have the juice to have your own (LHN), fine, have your own. Otherwise, you have the option to dump your rights into a pool that we can broadcast on the B12N, which will most likely be everyone else.
No matter what happens, Dan Beebe needs to go. My fear is that he's such a rubber stamp that the true power brokers in this conference will probably be hesitant to make a change.
There is no scenario that the commish of this conference wouldn't be a rubber stamp. I have no idea how they redid the charter, but needing 9 out of 12 UP votes to do anything cuts the balls off of any one guy who wants to make decisions. Kevin Weiberg took a demotion because he got tired of banging his head on a wall.
I fail to see how Beebe could have prevented Nebraska and aTm from bitching and crying about the system they helped create and thrived off of.
I believe the SEC charter requires 9 of 12 votes, or that's what I've been reading regarding realignment, anyway, and Slive does a pretty good job.
What you need isn't a rubber stamp. You need a hitman. You need a guy that's capable of having a vision, selling it to his members, and going out there and executing it in a cutthroat environment.
No matter what, Beebe may be the sacrificial lamb in all of this. If the Big 12 is to survive, I think Wabash is right; we need to blow it up and start over, or at least give that appearance. Part of that is bringing in a new commish because at the very least it shows that we're committed to fixing what ails the conference, even if the move is symbolic in nature.