Arkansas To Big 12 Could Be Great Scenario For Mountaineers, Big East

Due to the subject nature, this editorial will be a highly speculative article (even for me, an editorialist with an interest in realignment stories).

There are rumours floating around that Jerry Jones, owner of the fabulous Jerry Dome in Dallas, TX, is looking to get the University of Arkansas and another school into the Big 12 , presumably to help his alma mater back to their old status as a national revenue sports power by restoring their Texas recruiting and to restore the Big 12 championship game which is played in his stadium.  Jerry Jones denied the rumours although ESPNDallas.com reported they had a source that confirmed the rumours .

The Big 12-2, fending off pressure from a group of Texas legislators to add the University of Houston , has denied any desire to expand .

Orangebloods.com has reported they have confirmations from multiple sources that Arkansas has put out feelers to the Big 12 .  Arkansas has, you guessed it, denied the rumours , stating that Arkansas "has no interest in joining another conference."

But what if the Arkansas story is true?

This could actually give rise to an ideal scenario for a lot of schools, including West Virginia and the Big East.

Recall that when the Big 12(-2) returned from the dead, there was a report that a massive coalition of unaffilliated parties were key players behind the scenes , even helping the in the TV renegotiations which played a key role by delivering a shockingly rich payout to the near dead conference.

These parties reportedly interceded and the networks went along because they did not want to see a massive BCS automatic qualifier conference realignment.  They did not want to have the Southeastern Conference raid additional schools from the ACC and the ACC to raid additional schools from the Big East, causing among other things renegotiation's of both of those conference's TV deals.

Jerry Jones certainly has the media contacts where he could make the TV work for a return of Arkansas to a conference where all of their rivals play.

A little background history on the Arkansas move to the SEC

(As even longtime Arkansas athletic director Frank Broyles - the guy who took Arkansas out of the Southwest conference - said of Arkansas in the SEC in a recent interview,"We don't have a rivalry."

Broyles lead Arkansas out of the SWC, because when the SWC was dying, the Pac-10 was a lot stronger of a conference and A&M was perceived as a much weaker school overall than they are today, but still Pac-10 worthy academically.   

The thought was that the Pac-10 was strong enough to cherry pick the SWC.  Broyles worried that UT and A&M could be taken by the Pac-10, leaving Arkansas out in the cold.  Those feelings of uncertainty and insecurity pushed Broyles to pursue SEC membership.  Broyles thought the SEC was an ideal home because UT and possibly A&M could come with them, but the politics that would lead to the the formation of the Big 12 and a lack of enthusiasm by UT in SEC academics killed that deal.

While the era of dominant Arkansas football and basketball programs has apparently ended due to the gradual recruiting erosion that affects many conference outliers, the SEC has been a stable home for Arkansas in terms of TV revenue ($17 million in 2009) and even if their overall athletic revenue trails half the members of the Big 12-2 (likely due in no small part to that lack of rivals), the move was still unquestionably the right one for the time.  Broyles was later told that due to the politics of the time in Texas, that Arkansas would have been on the outside looking in when the Big 12 formed.

Today, the Pac-10 has a much weaker position and A&M and UT are in a much stronger one, leading the Pac-10 to offer slots to a number of schools with much less of an academic reputation than Arkansas in an effort to land UT, leading many to suspect the conditions facing Arkansas have changed.)

Today's SEC

During the SEC courtship of A&M, rumours leaked that a number of members of the SEC doubted that schools like Florida State, Miami, Clemson, and Georgia Tech could deliver the required additional TV revenue to their conference as they are already in the SEC's existing TV footprint.  (This had always been an historical contention of realignment buffs, but after the ACC signed their TV fairly lucrative TV deal, there was some thought that a new market of networks reselling game by game content may have changed the equation.  The rumours of lack of support in the SEC from other members suggests it may not have changed it enough.)

Virginia Tech publicly stated that they were content in the same conference as Virginia, leading to much speculation that SEC expansion would likely start with Texas A&M balanced by a small TV West Virginia addition to get the conference to an even number and possibly even end there.

It appeared that the SEC had  surprisingly fewer options than most expected entering realignment.  That said, some feared that after the SEC landed A&M, the SEC would have the juice to eventually still nab a couple ACC powers even if they were in the footprint, triggering a daisy chain of BCS realignment that would consume the Big East.

Why a scenario like this could really work for the Mountaineers, Notre Dame, and the Big East

If Jerry Jones can coax TV networks into giving the required money to allow an Arkansas move to a new Big 12 (with a school like BYU, Houston, Air Force, TCU, or -lol - pipedream Notre Dame as the original rumor suggests as member 12), it goes to follow that the TV networks still are not going to want the SEC to add ACC powers and force renegotiation's on both BCS conferences' long term deals.

(It also follows that without the addition of Texas or Virginia TVs the SEC may not be able to generate the revenue to add an ACC power without each member taking a pay cut.)

It is entirely possible that some or all of the same groups who brought the pressure that lead to the very high TV payouts to prevent massive realignment may push the networks to push the SEC to in a certain direction - West Virginia - for a replacement 12th member.

Why is that good?  

First, because West Virginia is perceived as a lesser academic school than the other core Big East members (Pitt, Syracuse, UConn, Rutgers).

The BCS is a coalition of academically elite universities who look favorably upon other highly ranked schools and the management groups behind large bowls that look favorably on football programs with strong fan support.

If the Big East loses one of their stronger academic schools, they have no legitimate replacement available to them among the FBS applicants of similar academic standing, meaning the Big East loses stature among the university half of the BCS.

Fairly or not, replacing West Virginia with a Memphis, UCF, or probably an ECU (due to the implications of their football record on the BCS computations) if need be would likely not dramatically affect the view of the Big East in academic terms.  Any of those three schools would likely see a BCS fueled attendance bounce if they got into the Big East.  Now... they won't be a West Virginia in that regard, but I suspect it would not be required.

Today's much weaker Arkansas is seen in the SEC as just a tolerable outlier in the SEC that delivers a poor small state of 2.9 Million residents.   The addition of West Virginia, a school with stronger football and basketball programs in a poor state with 1.8 million residents may be seen as a peer replacement.

If the SEC added West Virginia and the Big East added say ECU or even a distant school like TCU (hurting the MWC while helping the Big East in the BCS standings), there is no reason to renegotiate the ACC or SEC TV deals.

Additionally, it puts a little more public pressure on the Big Ten and ACC not to raid the Big East.

It is one thing for the No. 1 revenue conference with a perceived unstable total of 11 teams to make the first move and add a few schools like Rutgers and Pitt and then the ACC swoop in and "rescue" UConn and Syracuse where the collapse of a conference may be seen as an unintentional consequence of the Big Ten and ACC doing business, but would be quite another to see the No. 1 revenue conference at a solid 12 members make the SECOND move on a conference that the public had seen as weathering the storm of realignment. 

That kind of "Goliath eats wounded by plucky David" story could bring federal oversight to the BCS that the Big Ten might not like. (Frankly that may have been part of why the Big 12 was saved last week.)

In addition to being a best case scenario for the Mountaineers, this could serve as an inoculation for the Big East for this round of realignment.

Additionally, with the Pac-10 at 12 and the Big 10 at 12, it is entirely possible that the Big 10 will stay at 12 for now and evaluate the Nebraska addition and the conference title game for a couple of years before making another move.  The Pac-10 had always said that if the Big 10 went to twelve they would feel a compulsion to go to 12 to mirror them.  It is very possible that both conferences might stay at 12 for the time being.  The Big Ten is quite methodical and the current mix is a nice one.

With the Big 12, Big 10, ACC, and SEC all at 12 members, there may again be a consensus that 12 is ideal size for a BCS conference, leaving the Big East a few years to build a more stable BCS automatic qualifier conference.

While realignment scenarios and the Big East generally are not described by words like "hopeful", this scenario albeit reliant upon a series of long odds, could be.