After the news dropped about the NFL lawsuit regarding hiring practices, I jumped down a rabbit hole tonight.
The lawsuit touches on what was, at one point, "The Rooney Rule." It involves the Giants allegedly giving a show interview to a minority candidate. I do not want to get into the merits of the suit here. I found it interesting the Giants were mentioned, as they are owned by the Mara family. They have a nearly century-long relationship with the Rooney family and I thought they were related (two of the grandkids married.)
I came across this article about how Art Rooney and Tim Mara came to own their franchises and the family connections:
archive.triblive.com
It's a pretty cool read. Now, why would anyone on KSO care about this?
In 1961, the Rooney's convinced the Mara's to agree to even distribution of TV revenue between NFL franchises. Obviously, this was a pretty significant concession on the part of the Giants and I think it probably helped set up the NFL to focus their attention on the good of the league and the product on the field vs. other leagues (MLB.)
This got me thinking about the core problems with the Big 12 - caused by making the opposite decision related to media rights.
The more I think about it, the more I think the Big 12 is in a stronger position with OU and Texas out.
Here's why:
Let's think of this as us selling off OU and Texas as underperforming assets. There's a lot of revenue behind them, but they're a massive elephant in the room preventing a better aligned organization from focusing on innovation and growth.
Think about what we're "giving up" to the SEC: two behemoths among a league of behemoths. ESPN will pimp them as the best league, they'll get all the slots on ESPN, etc. But these are two teams that, right now, look to be middle of the pack in the SEC. They're going to be viewed as peers in a conference that has an identity. That identity isn't going to change. They're going to get an initial bump in revenue, and they're going to struggle to sniff a CCG.
The Big 12 has an opportunity here to jettison two troublemakers who seemed to constantly interfere with the good of the league and rebrand itself. How does the Big 12 differentiate between the other conferences? We get rid of round robin and expand to a couple cool destinations. What's our other selling points as a conference to recruits? How does that change when you have teams all pulling together? Can we innovate in the media rights space as more and more content moves to streaming, can we innovate on the field, and can we finally agree to pool tier 3 content? Most importantly, how do we work together to make it happen?
The more I think about the initial "death of the Big 12" reactions many had, the more I think we actually come out ahead on this long term. It's going to be a leaner organization - even with more schools in it - and it's going to have more long-term growth potential.
I'm actually pretty excited to see what happens.
If you've made it this far, what do you think?
The lawsuit touches on what was, at one point, "The Rooney Rule." It involves the Giants allegedly giving a show interview to a minority candidate. I do not want to get into the merits of the suit here. I found it interesting the Giants were mentioned, as they are owned by the Mara family. They have a nearly century-long relationship with the Rooney family and I thought they were related (two of the grandkids married.)
I came across this article about how Art Rooney and Tim Mara came to own their franchises and the family connections:
Welcome
It's a pretty cool read. Now, why would anyone on KSO care about this?
In 1961, the Rooney's convinced the Mara's to agree to even distribution of TV revenue between NFL franchises. Obviously, this was a pretty significant concession on the part of the Giants and I think it probably helped set up the NFL to focus their attention on the good of the league and the product on the field vs. other leagues (MLB.)
This got me thinking about the core problems with the Big 12 - caused by making the opposite decision related to media rights.
The more I think about it, the more I think the Big 12 is in a stronger position with OU and Texas out.
Here's why:
Let's think of this as us selling off OU and Texas as underperforming assets. There's a lot of revenue behind them, but they're a massive elephant in the room preventing a better aligned organization from focusing on innovation and growth.
Think about what we're "giving up" to the SEC: two behemoths among a league of behemoths. ESPN will pimp them as the best league, they'll get all the slots on ESPN, etc. But these are two teams that, right now, look to be middle of the pack in the SEC. They're going to be viewed as peers in a conference that has an identity. That identity isn't going to change. They're going to get an initial bump in revenue, and they're going to struggle to sniff a CCG.
The Big 12 has an opportunity here to jettison two troublemakers who seemed to constantly interfere with the good of the league and rebrand itself. How does the Big 12 differentiate between the other conferences? We get rid of round robin and expand to a couple cool destinations. What's our other selling points as a conference to recruits? How does that change when you have teams all pulling together? Can we innovate in the media rights space as more and more content moves to streaming, can we innovate on the field, and can we finally agree to pool tier 3 content? Most importantly, how do we work together to make it happen?
The more I think about the initial "death of the Big 12" reactions many had, the more I think we actually come out ahead on this long term. It's going to be a leaner organization - even with more schools in it - and it's going to have more long-term growth potential.
I'm actually pretty excited to see what happens.
If you've made it this far, what do you think?
