Big 12 Football: Reasons Why Texas A&M Left the Big 12 to the SEC

To those who may not know, the under-performing Texas A&M Aggies are leaving to the SEC, and will be the only Texas school that will not play other Texas schools each year. This radical decision by Texas A&M cannot be easily explained, and the choice likely had many different factors involved (at least, I hope).

An easy and tired excuse that I have heard is that the fault lies with the University of Texas’s Longhorn Network, but the Big 12 put various restrictions on what the network can broadcast. These restrictions also included the (justifiably) dreaded and unfair broadcasting of high school games in the state of Texas.

If it was money and exposure that was the true culprit, then how would moving to an already 12 team conference? It sounds somewhat ludicrous because that would entail the television revenue being divided amongst more schools, resulting in probably less money overall than staying in a ten member conference.

One other idea why A&M left might be due to the apparent implosion of the Big 12 and they simply were leaving a sinking ship, similar to Arkansas leaving the SWC in the early 90’s. If that was the case then why on Earth would A&M agree to the Big 12 levying larger exit fees that coincidentally involved A&M receiving a large chunk of that cash? In addition if the seeming implosion of the Big 12 was the culprit, then A&M should have left when Nebraska and Colorado announced instead of being two faced by saying they want to keep the conference together and at the same time seeking to leave the conference. 

Perhaps the reason why they left was because they felt like they were always in Texas’s shadow and due to their massive inferiority complex decided to leave, while naively hoping that Texas would continue its rivalry with A&M, because they have true rival in the SEC. It is this same emotionally based decision making that probably got Mike Sherman fired because he lost to Texas.

Nebraska was justified in moving, they no longer had a major rival after Oklahoma was placed in the South division and didn’t play annually. As a result they were no longer invested in the conference and by playing chump teams like Kansas annually probably hurt their recruiting profile. Now that they are playing schools like Michigan every year, there profile will increase. The same goes for Colorado.

Texas A&M’s ardent use of “truthiness” has caused it to move to a conference where they will be over matched by playing LSU and Alabama annually and ending their only rivalry. If the SEC doesn’t work out for A&M, and they regress to being the caliber of Ole Miss, they at least can no longer blame Texas for their problems.