No TV for Nebraska This Week

That is, no free TV. Yes, to watch Nebraska this week will cost any and all fans $30 as part of the beautifully constructed Big 12 TV package.

And people wander why Nebraska is leaving for the Big Ten? Maybe it’s because the Big 12 is run by someone no further evolved than a primate.

In what has become a the Weekly Wednesday Rant, this week’s target is none other than, Dan Beebe.

Instead of Dumb Beebe promoting the brand of the conference with a Big 12 Television Network (yanno, the whole reason the conference started losing teams in the first place), he has endorsed the launch of Texas’s very own Longhorn Network, who agreed to a deal with ESPN last week.

Ugh…….

(More…………)

Does he not remember how quickly teams wanted to leave the Big 12 Conference in the offseason? Any team that had an offer to join another BCS Conference would have been out the door before you could say, “Dan Beebe is an idi……”

Fortunately, for Beebe, and for Texas, not all teams had that luxury. Two of them did (Nebraska and Colorado), one of them thought they did (Missouri), while others were rumored to be on the move (Oklahoma, Oklahoma St, Texas A&M).

The lesser teams sat at home and wished on shooting stars that things would work out. There wasn’t much else they could do, and now they’re stuck in The Big Texas, The Texas Ten, The Texas Ten Step, etc…

This is all fine for now, and effects won’t be shown in the short term, but I have to question the longevity of the conference.

After reaching a deal with ESPN, Texas now stands as the top TV revenue-producing school in the country, a haul of $32 million annually, $12 million of which will not be shared with the other teams in the conference.

Are the other teams in the conference gonna stand for that?

Luckily, that’s not a question I have to answer since I’m writing from a Nebraska perspective.

It seems to me that the Big East and Little 10 will be racing for relevancy in the coming years. The SEC, Big Ten-12, Pac-12, and the ACC (I guess) will all be set with 12 teams and lucrative TV contracts.

What happens if (and when) the Big East makes a Godfather offer to Oklahoma and Oklahoma St? Or what happens when Texas secedes the union and becomes its own country? Neither result in anything positive if you ain’t Texas.

Yes, the Big 12 could make the same kind of offer, but it would most likely have to come from the Texas Chancellor or Athletic Director, because Dan Bumbe seems incompetent in that facet.

And you know the best way to reward incompetence? While not the top answer on my Family Feud board, the Big 12 elected to extend his contract. Congratulations Little 10!

I may have gotten a bit off topic from my original point here, but that’s ok. I’m very disappointed in facing the dilemma of either not watching the Huskers this week, or paying $30 for a game that will most likely be over by the 2nd quarter.

Maybe I’ll see if my bosses will pay for it, or maybe I’ll just ask Dan Beebe…