(02-13-2017 11:45 PM)dunstvangeet Wrote: They already offered this. There were two rounds when they tried this. The first was the original deal, when they decided that they were going to stay put. The deal was almost exactly what you proposed: that Texas gets to keep all revenue from the Longhorn Network. The Longhorn Network becomes a PAC-12 Network. If the overall revenues from the PAC-12 becomes more than 15 times the Longhorn Network revenues, then Texas gets 1/16th of the share above those networks.
By "they" in your first sentence, I assume you mean that Texas offered the PAC a deal.
I definitely believe that.
(02-13-2017 11:45 PM)dunstvangeet Wrote: The PAC-12 said "No." If the PAC-12 was willing to accept this, then Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma State would already be in the PAC-16. Texas only decided to stay put because the PAC-12 wouldn't accept their Longhorn Network proposal. The only reason that the Longhorns were looking at the ACC was that they figured that the ACC would be desperate enough to actually allow them to keep their Longhorn Network, especially since they didn't have their own conference network. The reality is that none of the Power-4 conferences would allow Texas to keep the deal they're getting in the Big-12.
This is exactly what I was getting at. Although, in my make-believe scenario it was Texas that had the pressure.
But if you simply alter the scenario a tad, such that Texas makes an announcement that it
will be choosing either the PAC, ACC, or SEC for full, football playing, membership ... then you watch how those conferences contort themselves to try luring Texas into their respective flocks.
I do think the PAC would buckle. It would let the LHN be a stand-alone ESPN network, and it would let Texas show
all of its
non-conference home contests on the channel as well as even a limited amount of
conference home contests on the channel. And would let Texas keep all revenue from that, while giving Texas a full share of conference distribution and full access to PAC bowls.
Even if it wouldn't allow any conference contests, Texas could still feather its schedules to sprinkle in non-conference games in all its sports throughout the season, giving plenty of content to LHN.
As you've alluded to, this is exactly the key to getting Texas to join one of the P4: membership, with full benefits, AND getting to keep all revenue from the LHN to themselves and stocking the network with sufficient content to keep people subscribing. It's their end game.