Big 12 Realignment: TV Contract Persuading Texas To Stay?

Rumors have been swirling Monday about conference realignment and the options that Big 12 schools have on their plate. Do they stay with the Big 12 conference or move west to the Pac-10?

ESPN's Joe Schad reported early Monday morning that the move of Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to the Pac-10 was "imminent." Schad's unnamed sources told him that the Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe's desperate plan to keep the conference together has "zero chance" and is "very unlikely" to persuade the schools.

Orangebloods.com has a different story. Chip Brown has since stated that Texas and company are now leaning towards keeping the conference together after reviewing the potential revenue from the newly proposed TV contract laid in front of them from Beebe.

Multiple reports have stated that Texas would be pulling in between $20 million and $25 million annually with the new television contract. Along with the new TV terms comes the ability for Texas to create their own Longhorns Network, which could bring in and addition $3-5 million each year.

This could be the needed push that the Big 12 needed to incorporate, because as everyone knows, money rules all in college football.

Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma would all be guaranteed at least $20 million a year from this contract, but the same does not hold true for the remaining seven teams if this were to pan out.

The rest of the conference would be generating between $14 million and $17 million as the Big 12 does not have equal revenue sharing. Although the figures differ for the rest, it is still a doubling of annual revenue for those seven teams, compared to now.

It is possible that the uneven distribution of revenue could push the bottom seven teams to continue to look elsewhere.

Texas and company are now reviewing the figures of this new TV contract, weighing their options against a possible move to the Pac-10.

Questions still remain though: Where was this TV contract last week before Colorado and Nebraska jumped ship? Is this a desperate attempt for Beebe to save his job?

There is only one thing that is known at this point: It's all up to Texas. It is believed that they are now leaning towards renovating the Big 12, but this can all change on an hourly basis.

Sources: Orangebloods.com, ESPN