With bluffs and threats and proverbially shaking fists, Texas tried to bully the Big 12 South into bending to its will and heading to the Pac-10. Or so it seemed.
Master! The Big 12! It’s alive!
It’ll be Texas A&M athletic director Bill Byrne who inadvertently helped save the league. His refusal to play the “UT says” game - and his keen understanding of just how awry “Pac-16” travel schedules could get - was the lone stumbling block in the plan of Texas President Bill Powers, a California-Berkeley graduate - to send Dust Bowl football on the last train for the coast.
That stumbling block bought some key people - whom ESPN says you’ll never know- enough time to cobble together a weird, long-term TV deal - that, as of this hour, has remained oddly secret - that satisfied UT enough to make the Horns’ final demands to the Pac-10 utterly unreasonable.
more...
http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2010/06/14/4c16f930c2b32
Master! The Big 12! It’s alive!
It’ll be Texas A&M athletic director Bill Byrne who inadvertently helped save the league. His refusal to play the “UT says” game - and his keen understanding of just how awry “Pac-16” travel schedules could get - was the lone stumbling block in the plan of Texas President Bill Powers, a California-Berkeley graduate - to send Dust Bowl football on the last train for the coast.
That stumbling block bought some key people - whom ESPN says you’ll never know- enough time to cobble together a weird, long-term TV deal - that, as of this hour, has remained oddly secret - that satisfied UT enough to make the Horns’ final demands to the Pac-10 utterly unreasonable.
more...
http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2010/06/14/4c16f930c2b32