Big 12 and Conference Expansion: Texas Finally Doing the Right Thing?

Once again the Big 12 is on the verge of collapse. The University of Missouri Board Of Curators has authorized their chancellor Brady Deaton to explore leaving the conference. Missouri is considering joining the Southeast Conference, but it remains to be seen whether the SEC is interested in Missouri.

Missouri head football coach Gary Pinkel has been very vocal about his frustration with Texas' Longhorn Network and its attempts to broadcast high school content. Pinkel has built the Mizzou football program into a consistent bowl team by finding recruits from the state of Texas who have been overlooked by the in-state powers.

It is not hard to understand why Pinkel would be against allowing Texas to broadcast high school content. It would offer another major obstacle for his program when recruiting in the richest pool of football talent in the country.

With the threat of Missouri leaving the conference a reality, Big 12 conference commissioner Chuck Neinas reacted swiftly by inviting Texas Christian University to join the Big 12 in the 2012-13 school year. TCU accepted the offer and will make the Big 12 a 10-team conference if Missouri sticks around.

Neinas also appears to have been able to convince Texas to exercise some common sense and promise not to broadcast any high school content on the Longhorn Network for the remainder of the conference's television contract.

It will be interesting to see if Texas can keep its word when it comes to this pledge. Texas has promised not to broadcast high school games before. While it was talking a good game, its actions told a different story.

When the NCAA banned the broadcasting of all high school programming on a college network, Texas and ESPN responded by ignoring the ban and pushing forward with the broadcasting of high school highlights.

Now it appears that the whole fallacy of putting high school content on a college network has run its course.

It is sad that Texas has to push a conference to the brink of collapse before it will decide to do the right thing. It is a common sense decision that the B1G schools made before they even started the B1G Network.

It is sad that in a 10-team conference only Gary Pinkel, Bill Byrne, and Bowen Loftin would speak out publicly against such an inherently flawed concept.

How can anyone argue that putting potential recruits on an individual college's network is not a recruiting advantage for that college? That is not even factoring into the equation that the largest sports network in the world, who also ranks football recruits, is running the network.

It appears that Texas felt it could push everyone around, and Texas A&M and Missouri were the only schools who would stand up to it. Thankfully, that appears to have been enough to prevent Texas from ignoring NCAA mandates.

The question that this entire process has brought up is why Texas has to be pushed to the limit before doing the right thing? Assuming that this time, Texas keeps its word and does the right thing.

The Big 12 is a weaker conference because Nebraska, Colorado, and Texas A&M have left. Whether or not the conference can make it to the end of the six-year television contract will depend on whether Texas does what is best for the conference as a whole, and not just what is best for Texas' bottom line.