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How Close Were Oklahoma and Texas to Leaving Big 12 Early? This Close, Reports Say

Multiple reports have surfaced this week offering details on the Sooners and Longhorns leaving the Big 12 after the 2023 season, but it looks like it won't happen now.

John E. Hoover

Fans on both sides who wanted Oklahoma and Texas to leave the Big 12 Conference early nearly got their wish.

That’s according to multiple reports, over the last two days, citing unnamed sources, that shed light on the Sooners’ and Longhorns’ efforts to migrate to the Southeastern Conference starting in 2024.

Action Network college football insider Brett McMurphy even reported that the schools and the conference had reached an agreement to an exit strategy that would let OU and Texas out of their contract and television grant of rights deal that runs through June 2025.

McMurphy reported Friday the parties “have a deal” but said ESPN and Fox are “not satisfied,” and that’s why it hasn’t gotten done yet.

ESPN college football insider Pete Thamel reported Friday that “weeks of negotiations” ... “have stalled and a deal is not expected to come to fruition.”

Thamel said the sides “couldn’t agree how to create equitable value for what Fox would lose in 2024” — broadcast inventory that essentially consists of the equivalent off seven football games featuring the Sooners and Longhorns.

Thamel even reported “negotiations heated up over the past few days” as Big 12 leaders met in Dallas/Fort Worth this week.

Earlier in the week, CBS Sports college football insider Dennis Dodd reported that OU and Texas recently “made an offer to the Big 12 and Fox to leave the league one year early for the SEC.”

Dodd said that offer “was rejected” for reasons that were unclear, but the holdup now appears clear: networks don’t want to lose a full year of high-profile inventory with OU and Texas only to have it replaced with inventory with BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston.

A report Friday from The Athletic’s Matt Fortuna said there had been momentum “since early December” for OU and Texas to leave a year early and “talks had ramped up heavily in the past few weeks.”

Fortuna also pointed out that the new SEC media rights deal and the expanded College Football Playoff contract both begin in 2024-25, which would explain the Sooners’ and Longhorns’ desire to establish their new address next year and make the transition as smooth as possible for both leagues. The Pac-12 also expands to 16 members that year, with the upcoming additions of USC and UCLA.

The Big 12 on Tuesday announced its 2023 schedule, which came late in the process. But the timetable makes sense now if the league and its members and OU and Texas were engaged in heated negotiations for an early breakup.

New commissioner Brett Yormark has talked openly about the 14-team league and its potentially awkward two-year window, which blends OU-Texas with the four newcomers for just two years but can be done so equitably for all parties. Yormark previously spoke about the need for all four new members to play “everyone” (meaning Oklahoma and Texas) during that two-year window.

It’s unclear now, however, if the 2023 schedule reflects just the first year of that equitable, two-year scheduling model or if it’s just a one-year placeholder until an early exit strategy can be agreed upon by all parties.

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John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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