For most of the earlier 10 years, it has felt as if the Large 12 meeting was on ground so shaky that it would make the San Andreas fault seem steady. So it is rather fitting that the Texas Tech football program’s most effective hope for sustainability in the midst of what seems to be impending convention realignment comes from the region of the region where the floor is recognised to rattle and roll from time to time.
To start with of all, let us be apparent. This conference realignment chaos is a Texas Tech soccer issue previously mentioned all else. It is soccer that is driving the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners to the SEC and it is football that generates the lion’s share of the profits for nearly each athletic section in the country.
Guaranteed, Tech is in wonderful shape in basketball and baseball but those people sporting activities, along with all the other folks on campus that are not played with an rectangular ball, will have no bearing on what transpires to Texas Tech when the Major 12 as we know it ceases to exist. What’s far more, in all of the non-football sports, the setup of the NCAA tournaments tends to make meeting affiliation significantly considerably less crucial.
Because of the number of teams picked for every event, programs like Gonzaga basketball can turn into a nationwide electric power even with taking part in in a mid-major meeting. Furthermore, as lately as 2016, we’ve found Coastal Carolina acquire the Higher education Earth Sequence even with coming from the Sunlight Belt Convention.
But no crew from outside the house of the five significant conferences, other than Notre Dame, has appeared in the four-team Higher education Football Playoff. And yearly, the national winner in that activity arrives from only a select team of plans, all of which have the financial help of a big meeting aiding to fund their substantial soccer budgets.
So while Mark Adams and Tim Tadlock are likely to be looking at what takes place with the most recent reshuffling of the NCAA deck, their respective applications should really be great regardless of what occurs. But for Tech soccer, there is only 1 hope for remaining at the grownup desk and that is for the PAC 12 to throw the Pink Raiders a lifeline.
Many all over the nation presume that the PAC 12 will be swift in its attempts to mirror the SEC and extend to 16 groups. That would only additional the principle that college or university soccer is headed towards a landscape that incorporates four important conferences, every with 16 customers.
Fortunately, Tech delivers quite a bit to the desk in negotiations with the PAC 12 irrespective of above a decade of on-subject woes. The point is that if the PAC 12 wants to grow, it will do so only if an expansion were to make fiscal perception. In other phrases, the tv contracts it has with its media associates would have to be additional worthwhile thus making sure a better payday for every single member establishment. Which is wherever Tech may well have the within edge.
The only place for the PAC 12 to broaden would be in the central time zone. Already acquiring the Pacific and Mountain time zones monopolized, the PAC 12 could see the central time zone, and especially Texas, as a deserving spot in which to attempt to establish a foothold.
With Texas A&M and Texas (assumedly) in the SEC, the most important tv draw in Texas would be Texas Tech thanks specifically to the huge variety of Red Raiders in the Dallas metroplex. Absolutely sure, other courses like TCU and Baylor could engage in the Texas card as nicely but the alumni and lover bases of individuals little non-public colleges are minuscule as opposed to Texas Tech’s.
That is why numerous are predicting that any PAC 12 expansion would involve the Red Raiders even though few (if any) are together with the Bears or the Horned Frogs in any PAC 16 projections. Also fueling the rumors of Texas Tech landing in the PAC 12 is the reality that that state of affairs arrived inside an eyelash of participating in out the very last time conference realignment shook the school soccer earth at its core just more than a 10 years back. In reality, then PAC 12 commissioner Larry Scott even arrived to Lubbock for a clandestine assembly with Texas Tech officers. Therefore, there is explanation to feel that Tech and the PAC 12 could rekindle their flirtations with one another and that this time, it could outcome in a marriage instead than a 1-night time stand.
But what if the PAC 12 decides, as it did a decade ago, to stand pat? That would be the worst-scenario circumstance for Texas Tech football. In these types of a doomsday problem, Tech and Oklahoma Point out would possible join up with TCU and Baylor in making an attempt to retain the Big 12 practical.
On the other hand, what if West Virginia finds refuge in the ACC and Kansas and Iowa Point out obtain risk-free harbor in the Significant 10? That would Go away the remnants of the Significant 12 looking to incorporate five teams just to get back to 10. And what four intrigued groups would transfer the television needle? In a word…none.
A big fish like Notre Dame is not coming to the Significant 12. The Irish are already contractually affiliated with the ACC and they even played very last time in that league on a one particular-time COVID-19 induced basis. So make no mistake, if Norte Dame joins any league, it will be the ACC.
Moreover, no college in its appropriate thoughts would leave the basic safety of an additional power five conferences to be part of a Significant 12 that is using on h2o at Titanic charges. That would leave the convention to decide from the top rated solutions in conferences this sort of as the Mountain West, AAC, and other significantly less-than-sexy conferences. No, changing Texas and OU with Houston and SMU certainly wouldn’t be sufficient to help you save the Significant 12 from falling into the realm of 2nd-class citizenry but that would be the league’s only selection for “survival”.
Even even worse, what if the merry-go-spherical stops and Iowa Point out, Kansas, and WVU have all observed cozy new houses in a important conference when the Texas universities are still left on the outside looking in? That worst-circumstance situation, one particular in which there is no Large 12 and no PAC 16, would decimate the Red Raider soccer software and ship Tech scrambling for a place in a mid-big meeting. That would set the method back again in excess of sixty years to the times of the Border Meeting and which is a nightmare no Crimson Raider would like to facial area.
So through all of the insanity that is specified to come about in the upcoming handful of times, months, and months, there is a single issue of mild on the horizon that Tech and its enthusiasts ought to search towards for hope. And it emanates from the West Coastline.
