Iowa State AD says Big 12 won’t miss Longhorns
Texas and Oklahoma won’t leave the Big 12 for the SEC for another 16 months, but at least one Big 12 athletic director doesn’t mind saying he’s ready for them to leave immediately.
In a Tuesday afternoon appearance on 365 Sports, Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard was asked about the Cyclones’ basketball game against No. 8 Texas being broadcast only on the Longhorn Network.
“(They) can’t leave soon enough,” Pollard told 365 Sports host David Smoak. “Does that answer your question?”
The existence of the Longhorn Network, which aired Texas’ 72-54 win over No. 23 Iowa State on Tuesday night, was just one of many complaints other Big 12 schools had about Texas. None of those concerns will be an issue for the conference’s remaining teams when the Longhorns and Sooners officially join the SEC on July 1, 2024.
Initially, the schools weren’t going to switch conferences until 2025, but earlier this month, they reached a combined $100 million agreement to leave the Big 12 a year early.
For the 2023-24 academic year, the conference will be a 14-team league with the University of Houston, UCF, Cincinnati and BYU joining on July 1. When Texas and Oklahoma are out of the picture, the Big 12 could look to further expand with reported interest in adding Gonzaga in men’s basketball and possibly four Pac-12 schools: Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
On 365 Sports, Pollard compared the Big 12’s current situation to where it was in 2011 and 2012 when Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri and Texas A&M all left, which is the message he said he relayed to the Cyclones fan base when the news broke two summers ago.
Even without the Longhorns and Sooners sticking around, the Big 12 reached a six-year contract extension with ESPN and Fox in October that’s worth more than $2 billion.
“Nobody can tell us that 10 years from now, we might go, ‘That’s the best thing that ever happened to the Big 12, was them leaving,’ and here we are a year-and-a-half later and it’s kind of starting to look like that,” Pollard said. “I’m an optimist, so I’m going to keep forging forward. I’m excited where we are, I’m thankful for where we are as they leave and I’m very optimistic about what the future holds for all of us.”
“(They) can’t leave soon enough. Does that answer your question?”
Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard