Oklahoma football: Was Big 12 pondering raising OU’s payout to thwart departure?

Both shoes have dropped in the past 24 hours in the ground-shaking saga about where the Oklahoma football program will be pledging its allegiance in the near future.

The Big 12 Executive Committee met by videoconference on Sunday with the presidents of both the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas. The meeting was described, in a press statement released by the Big 12, as “cordial and the Executive Committee expressed a willingness to discuss proposals that would strengthen the conference and be mutually beneficial to OU and UT.”

Both universities listened to what the Big 12 representatives had to say, and on Monday they reacted to what they heard by jointly notifying the Big 12 that they will not renew their grant of rights agreement that will expire on June 30, 2025.

Then on Tuesday morning, Oklahoma and Texas formally applied for membership to join the Southeastern Conference. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey acknowledged in a subsequent statement, that the SEC office had received the formal request and would take administrative action on the request “in the near future.”

The next step is for the 14 member institutions of the SEC to vote on accepting or rejecting the petition for OU and Texas to join the SEC. At least 11 member schools must vote yes to allow the move.

A timetable for that to happen is unclear at this time, other than the reference to “in the near future.”

According to Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports, the Big 12 had been discussing a different financial structure in which both OU and Texas would be awarded a bigger revenue share as an enticement to remain in the Big 12 Conference.

Dodd reported on Saturday that the new structure would grant the two schools an additional half-share annually (1.5 share each) that would raise their annual revenue share to approximately $56 million annually. That would be a $19 million payout above the $37 million Big 12 schools currently receive.

Obviously, that was enough inducement to have Oklahoma or Texas stay put. I’m not sure where that extra revenue was supposed to come from — seems rather pie in the sky, if you ask me — and it was probably far fetched to believe that it would have ever reached final approval.

Regardless, the wheels are definitely in motion for the Sooners and Longhorns to take their ball and play elsewhere.

The ball is now firmly in the SEC’s court and in the hands of its 14 member schools.

Once OU and Texas get past the next hurdle (the vote on their petition to join), we might get a better understanding of how soon such a move might take place.

The official correspondence with the joint request to join the SEC asked to be considered for membership beginning with the 2025-26 athletic year.

That timing does not preclude Oklahoma and Texas from joining the SEC earlier than that, but were the two schools to decide to leave the Big 12 earlier than that — say within the next two years — they would incur an exit penalty of approximately $76 million. An amount that could be offset with the increased revenue share they would receive as members of the SEC.