FOX Sports is the Major Obstacle in Speeding the Big 12 to the Future

STILLWATER – The Big 12 Board of Directors has met the past two days inside a meeting room at the Grand Hyatt DFW Airport and the speculation going into the meeting was that by the time it concluded on Fruday afternoon that a release would be going out detailing how Oklahoma and Texas were departing the Big 12 one year earlier than the grant-in-rights called for. The growing attitude within the conference by the legacy eight members of the league, the current Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, and Oklahoma and Texas was to find a way to make that happen. Speed up the future for everybody including the four new members that will start their entry status this coming school year. BYU, Cincinnati, Central Florida, and Houston don’t have a vote in the matter but they get it. Afterall, three of those schools just bolted early from the American Athletic Conference. 

On the surface Oklahoma and Texas needed to fulfill their commitment or pay the penalty for leaving the conference before the current television contract with ESPN and FOX concludes following the 2024-25 academic calendar. The penalty to the conference was $168 million. Our sources said a negotiation that included potentially Oklahoma and Texas forfeiting their conference earnings from this athletic/academic year and the next, a figure that would likely total between $90-100 million from each school would satisfy the existing members. 

This morning, even before the Big 12 Presidents and Chancellors started their first meeting (the eight legacy members) at 10 a.m., Pete Thamel of ESPN first reported there were problems. Thamel took to social media and the ESPN digital platform.

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FOX wants more Oklahoma and Texas.

 “(The) parties couldn’t come to terms amid a complex negotiation between two schools (OU/Texas), two networks (ESPN/Fox) and the Big 12,” Thamel wrote on Twitter.

An “industry source” told Thamel: “There’s no formal timeline or brink from which you can’t come back, but this is where things are right now — a deal is unlikely.”

That story was echoed during the day and emphasized in several reports including one by Sports Illustrated. 

FOX and ESPN share the Big 12 football package more as equal partners through the 2024 football season. If Texas and Oklahoma were out of the league for that 2024 season and moving to the SEC where a new exclusive contract with ESPN is in place then FOX loses out. The tensions between the two major networks in college football are already thick. FOX Sports wants inventory and nothing thrown on the table has measured up.

It is guranteed that the SEC wwon’t want to give up any games including Oklahoma vs. Texas in Dallas. There was also talk of Oklahoma and Texas scheduling non conference games with existing Big 12 schools, but that causes everybody to have to break existing contracts with non conference opponents.  

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Most of the Big 12 members are ready for the Sooners and Longhorns to leave.

“Everybody, conceptually, is pretty close to a deal,” a Big 12 source told Sports Illustrated. “The hangup is Fox wants some inventory. If they get that figured out, they’re on the one-yard line.”

It’s a matter of time, whether it’s in 2024 or 2025, and the break-up will happen—and that’s what’s best for everyone.

“It’s time to move on,” says one Big 12 administrator. “Best for everybody is just to move on.”

There’s also the 99-year agreement that Big 12 schools signed in 2012, agreeing to stick together for the duration of the agreement. This is a deal that former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby kept citing just after the Summer 2021 breaking story on the Longhorns and Sooners going to the SEC. To get out of that deal costs two years’ worth of revenue, or around $80 million each. There hve been discussions according to our sources to slices that down to close to $30 million from each school. In the end the closing price for each school to exit after the 2023-24 academic year is right around $120 million each and a total for the remaining conference schools of $240 million. 

Our sources say just about every administrator on both sides of the break-up and including the Big 12 Conference office are good with that. It’s FOX Sports that is not so good right now.