Last summer's attempt to save the Big 12 Conference is turning out to be a temporary fix, as Texas A&M has informed the league that the Aggies are seeking a new home. Just about everyone expects that home to be the SEC.
The departure becomes official at the end of the 2011-12 academic year.
A major reshuffling of the conference seems inevitable, as the other member institutions seem increasingly dissatisfied with the Big 12's "there's Texas, and then there's everyone else" business model. UT's controversial rollout of The Longhorn Network - a joint venture with ESPN - may have been the final straw; the Texas-only television network is expected to create a massive disparity in both revenue and exposure that other conference schools cannot hope to overcome.
The move will likely touch off another round of conference realignment. The increasingly inaccurately-named Big 12 now has nine members committed beyond this season:
- Baylor
- Iowa State
- Kansas
- Kansas State
- Missouri
- Oklahoma
- Oklahoma State
- Texas
- Texas Tech
The league is expected to get back to an even number of members by adding at least one school. Meanwhile, adding the Aggies would leave the SEC with 13 teams: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt in the SEC East and Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State and Mississippi in the West.
The least-disruptive scenario under discussion would have Arkansas move to the Big 12 in a straight one-for-one swap. But there's also been talk that the Big 12 could aim higher and offer an invite to, say, Notre Dame, BYU or Pittsburgh, and Southern Methodist has been campaigning for an invite pretty openly. If the Big 12's A&M replacement comes from outside the SEC, more moves could follow.
If the Big 12 implodes... which seems like a very real possibility... we could see a move towards the mega-conferences that many expected would emerge from the last round of re-alignment.
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