A statement released by the University of Texas at Austin today said that regents met with school president William Powers Jr. to give Powers the official “go ahead” to sign a multi-million dollar television contract for UT, known as the Longhorn Network.
According to UT athletic director DeLoss Dodds, the idea of a Texas-only network has been on the discussion table for a few years and, according to Orangebloods.com’s Chip Brown, could be worth over $30 million dollars in revenue.
ESPN has acknowledged that they are in currently in talks with the university about broadcasting and distributing Texas games. The revenue from the television deal is additional to any Texas receives from the Big 12.
“We felt a Texas network would work better than people seeing a 12th of Texas on a conference network,” Dodds said in the release. "[We are] working on a deal but [we] do not have it yet.”
It’s believed a well-known fact that Texas remained in the Big 12 instead of departing for what would be the Pac-16 over the summer because the university would not have been able to pursue an independent television network at that time.