College Football Realignment: Texas A&M's Tenure in the Big 12 Is Over

The fat lady is warming up in the background. For Texas A&M and the Big 12, a 15-year marriage has ended and the only question is: how much will the divorce settlement be?

Texas A&M announced today that they have notified the Big 12 they are going to join another conference. This is the second-to-last step in a process that began in late July, when A&M decided that the Big 12 was no longer the best option for their athletic needs.

A Year In the Making

Last summer, we came within a hair of seeing college football realign into the super conference set-up that has been rumored since the mid-90s. Texas announced they were going to join the PAC 10 conference and were going to bring Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M with them.

The Aggies balked from joining a conference on the West Coast, which they did not feel was a cultural fit. Yet as Texas informed their coaches that the Big 12 was dead, A&M began to explore opportunities in the Southeastern Conference.

The SEC was interested in Texas A&M and it appeared that Texas and four other Big 12 schools would head West while A&M would join their brethren to the East. At the last second, Texas decided they did not want to be separate from A&M, and television executives from Fox and ESPN swooped in with enough money to placate the Ags' wandering eye.

The Big 12 would remain together, with Texas, OU and Texas A&M receiving guaranteed television revenue of $20 million per year while the other seven members of the conference would receive $14 million per year. All of the member schools signed a contract stipulating that each school would act in a manner which would promote the best interests of the conference. The Big 12 was saved and commissioner Dan Beebe was hailed as a conquering hero.

LHN Rears Ugly Head

In January of 2011 ESPN and Texas announced a combined project which would eventually be called the Longhorn Network. ESPN would broadcast third-tier content on a 24-hour network that would focus on the University of Texas and their athletic programs.

This was not a new concept; the Big 10 already had a 24-hour network that aired third-tier content for member schools to a national audience. Texas had even attempted this concept on their own with the Bevo-D pay per view channel. This, however, was the first time a major news entity had partnered with a college to promote said college through a network.

There was some concern that a network like ESPN, which creates the national narrative of the college football season, could favor the school that they have a significant investment in. A school that already brought in more revenue than any other in the nation would now have a 24-hour national infomercial backed by the most powerful sports entity in television media.

This sounded more like promoting the best interests of the school and not the conference, as had been promised.

Shortly thereafter, the conference schools' fears were confirmed when Texas and ESPN announced they were going to broadcast high school football games featuring current college prospects on the network. Also, word got out that Texas had attempted to strong arm Texas Tech into allowing the LHN to broadcast the Tech-Texas game.

Texas A&M had seen enough. Aggie President R. Bowen Loftin contacted SEC commissioner Mike Slive and the Ags began to explore joining the SEC.

A Smear Campaign

When word got out that the Aggies were seriously considering leaving the Big 12, ESPN and the print media initiated a smear campaign in an attempt to discredit A&M and keep them in the Big 12. This proved unsuccessful, as did various political maneuvers in the Texas State Legislature.

These attempts to stop the move appeared only to solidify the Ags' resolve. When the threat of legal action was taken off the table, a move to the SEC appeared imminent.

The Next Step

Now all that is left is for A&M and the Big 12 to come to an agreement on an exit fee. Once that decision is made, the SEC will hold a vote and Texas A&M will join the top football conference in the country.

Billy Liucci, who has covered Texas A&M athletics for the past 13 years and who has been on top of this story since it broke, predicts this entire process will likely end next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Texas A&M will venture out on their own into an elite conference with the chance to rebrand their product and forge their own path into the future separate from the other state schools.