Old news is Dan Beebe, if you haven't heard by now, that at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth second, he came up with a TV package deal worth and estimated 179 million dollars per year for the Big 12 conference, minus the Universities of Nebraska and Colorado. Those two schools transferred to different conferences -- Nebraska to the Big Ten and Colorado to the Pac10. The universities of Texas and Oklahoma, and Texas A&M University will pull an estimated twenty million dollars per year, per school from this new deal, the remaining seven will pull and estimated seventeen million dollars per year per school. Truthfully, the U of Texas won't benefit that much from the extra revenue as they have all they want in facilities, coaches and players. How this extra money will improve the athletic dept. is anyone's guess; are they bringing back wrestling as a varsity sport? Will UT field an ice hockey team? Who knows?
Being Nebraska and Colorado are no longer part of the Big 12, people's scheduling concerns are not well founded. Tough conference play has always been the norm for ISU. Think back to the days of the Big 8 conference. ISU had to play Oklahoma and Nebraska every year with Colorado, Missouri and Oklahoma State, and later on, Kansas State frequently fielding excellent teams. Now ISU will play Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma State. Not a whole lot of difference from my perspective. ISU teams and players will do do what they always have done, buck up and play their opponents to the best of their collective abilities; it's their only choice, and one they've made willingly.
Aside from the scheduling, ISU comes out of this deal way ahead where they are now. I look forward to the day in the near future where Jack Trice Stadium's south end zone is bowled in and its capacity is competitive with the rest of the conference along with the football team. Smile, better days are definitely ahead.
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