(03-05-2020 03:36 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(03-05-2020 03:01 PM)JRsec Wrote:  USC to the Big 12 = Texas to the ACC as a partial. Both are fantastical wishes of the respective recipients.

Why waste your fantasies shooting so low? Ohio State, Penn State, Georgia and Florida to the ACC!

All of those are lower than Texas.

Texas and Oklahoma limited the Big 12 to 10 because they wanted to bide their time until they could leverage their best advantages. That was a smart move. If they had moved in 2010-2 their value and leverage would not have been as high.

2024-5 will mark of the beginning of the last decade of the golden age of college football in terms of devotion by a generation. By 2035 Boomers will be statistically irrelevant and college football which will endure will enter an era where it has to attract fans from a generation that had a relatively low % of participants at the grade school level and therefore a much smaller group that identifies with it as a touchstone to their youth, other than as a family attendance event.

Texas and Oklahoma officials realize this and that this will be their last chance to truly cash in for some time to come. And the fact that it coincides with an downturn in population will exacerbate the importance of the decision as well. They are well aware of the Big 10's academics, but they are also well aware that a game their donors and alums love will endure longer in the South with its religious like following than elsewhere, and they realize that it is the South that is growing. Schools will want access to students, continued exposure, and revenue. This will be far more important for Oklahoma than it will be for Texas which has a steady outside revenue stream and is in a rapidly growing state.

It will be interesting to see what they do. But of all of those schools out there that generate movement rumors they ae the most likely to change conferences. They have the opportunity, the gravitas, and the leverage to do so. The real question will be is the money enough to be motive.