While Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany continues to hold the rest of college football at bay with his quest for maximizing television revenues, Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds seems more interested in exploring the options of an all-Longhorns TV network instead of any Big 12 and Pac-10 partnership.
“I always thought that individual institution networks serve institutions better than the conference network,” Dodds told the Dallas Morning News. “Texas people would rather be able to go to the Texas network and catch all of our sports and all of our events and all of our academic side rather than going to the conference network, where one-twelfth of the inventory will be Texas.”
With the ACC raising the bar with its new ESPN contract, it’s clear that all the major conferences -- expansion or not -- will try their best to get the absolute best deal for broadcast rights as possible. A school like Texas, the overwhelming team of choice in one of the nation’s largest states, might find some economic value in building a cable network just for their school.