Pac-12 Expansion: Forget the Pac-12, Texas Needs to Go Independent

The choice for Texas is very simple: join the Pac-12, or keep the Longhorn Network and go independent.

Conferences have made it abundantly clear that Texas will need to renegotiate their television deal with ESPN in order to join, and the Longhorns have made it equally apparent that they will not be giving up their lucrative deal.

That only leaves them with one option—to go independent.

Texas would easily qualify for the same type of BCS exemption that Notre Dame has, and if the Longhorns want their games to be played on their network, they may be forced to shop around the country for teams willing to do that.

Simply put, no conference is going to put up with the holier-than-thou attitude Texas is currently showing, and considering they did not even go to a bowl last year, they could not have picked a worse time to get cocky.

The biggest concession they would likely make is allowing big games to be shown on ESPN or ABC and that simply will not be enough for the Pac-12 which has equal revenue sharing.

As an independent school, they would open up their recruiting to the entire nation and could essentially choose their schedule’s difficulty years in advance.

Kids from Texas dream of playing in Austin, and it is unlikely that any visiting teams would be able to make a serious impact in taking the best talent out of the state.

And they will likely need that recruiting boost since Texas A&M joined the SEC. People want to play in the SEC and the come from all around the country to do it so for a Texas high school kid, the best option could very well be the Aggies.

The Pac-12 is a downgrade from the Big 12 when it actually had 12 members, but it is the best the Longhorns will likely be able to do. Going independent is better than playing Arizona, Arizona State and UCLA every year.

Sure, getting into the talent-rich state of California has to have Texas licking its chops, but there are other ways to do that—i.e. out-of-conference games.

Plus, the money that comes in from the Longhorn Network is going to surpass any shared revenue the Pac-12 can give.

Surviving as an independent school in basketball is tough, even Notre Dame knew it had to join a conference to be able to fill their schedule. There just are not enough teams available to play out-of-conference games in January and February.

But no one seems to care about basketball in all of this expansion talk except the ACC.

Conference expansion is all about football and television deals, and Texas has both of them and they don’t need a conference to keep them. So why bother joining one?