Bowlsby Stepping Down Later This Year
- Thread starter theshadow
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The issue with Bowlsby is that he was an outsider trying to convince club members that this was the club for them. We needed to hire someone that “was” OU/UT that felt OuT were the Club. With the rise of the SEC and A&M, that was likely not possible as of around 2016. Right after the last realignment round, there was a brief time in which the Big 12 could have become the 3 in P3 imo.
On the way home I was listening to the Big 12 channel, very pro OU. both guys played at OU and they were interviewing a guy from the paper in Austin. They were wondering if Bowlsby leaving would allow both schools to get better terms on leaving the conference and get to the SEC sooner rather than later. The newspaper guy just shot the idea down, said he had talked to the presidents of Baylor and TT, and they both want their pound of flesh from UT and OU, he thought that neither school would be invited to give any input in the new Comish and if they want to leave early, then they are going to have to pay up to get it done.
All thought that the new person would be an outsider or at least someone that is currently not an AD within the conference right now.
All thought that the new person would be an outsider or at least someone that is currently not an AD within the conference right now.
Agree 100% with no reason to give OUT any slack, get every dime out of them that we can, and make every road game a miserable b*tch for them. If we knew for sure when their last games in Ames were it would be a real shame if the hot water didn't work in their locker room.
I honestly have no ******* clue what you’re trying to say here. Are you a politician?
Man I could not disagree more. The whole exploration into expansion a while back was a cluster **** of epic proportions. What did that accomplish other than pissing off a bunch of schools?
Things got so bad under Bowlsby I honestly questioned whether he took the job to run the B12 into the ground. He’s been an abject failure since Day 1. He can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.
This is, in a word, ridiculous.
You can't be serious about holding Bowlsby responsible for the exploration into expansion. You'll recall that the entire reason expansion was considered was to satisfy OU's loudmouth, harebrained president who said being at 10 teams made the Big 12 "psychologically disadvantaged" - comments he himself walked back from after the damage was done. This was done with the sole reason of keeping a major pillar of the conference happy. And whatever the reasoning, no commissioner is going to publicly explore expansion unilaterally. Member schools stood behind the effort. David Boren should be the target of your ire on this one.
Rot in hell? Things got so bad? I don't know how to respond to that. If you don't like the guy, so be it. But you're going to have to do better than this.
How did his sham expansion search “strengthen the league” as you stated? It did nothing but embarrass the conference and the schools that applied for admission. It made the B12 the laughingstock of sports radio for a month, if not more.
If Bowlsby was aware then that OU and UT weren’t happy, I fail to see how he was blindsided last year. At some point the top guy has to take responsibility. What did all his blustering and threats amount to last summer? Not a damn thing.
Boren was the clear ringleader of the prior expansion exploration fiasco. Neither Bowlsby or other B12 Presidents (includng Leath who was pissed at the whole sham) were in Boren's corner on that.
ESPN orchestrated the departures of OU and UT before the close of ESPN's exclusive negotiating window for the B12's new TV deal. ESPN didn't want the B12 taking the deal to the open market with OU and UT. There is nothing that Bowlsby could have done to prevent that but now ESPN/OU/UT have to pay the price for that orchestration.
This is the key part. The commish's powers are largely up to the school presidents (Board of Directors).
"The Commissioner shall be the chief executive officer of the Conference, subject to the direction and under the supervision of the Board of Directors."
Every Big 12 commissioner has failed in some instance of an attempt at progress because just enough school leaders stood in the way.
Exactly. The fact that the big 12 doesn't have its own media network to tell it's story is problematic in 2022.
The reason for that is simple, UT and OU were always out for themselves and not the league as a whole. ESPN cuts a deal with UT to give them the LHN and keep them happy, UT could care less about the league, only their goal of staying at the top of the food chain.
The 12 members we have now are all committed to making the Big 12 the best league possible, now if the Big 10 or SEC comes calling looking for new members that could change, but until then, we are all in this together.
Screw UT and OU.
This is exactly right. There are thousands of posts on this site about OU and UT departing, and I've yet to see one person suggest how Bowlsby could plausibly have prevented it from happening. Just mindless stuff like "he should have known" or "he needs to take responsibility" as if another commissioner through some combination of charm and skill was going to negotiate us a TV contract that pays SEC/B1G money keeps them happy. It's nonsensical.
And from the other side of things you'll see OU fans complaining about bowlsby as if it was his fault they were getting more 11am games, when that was all a Fox decision, and something OU implicitly signed off on when they signed on to the tv option with the most possible money. Conferences could put all kinds of demands\standards for their coverage into these deals, but the networks would pay less, so they take the "pay us more and do what you want" option.
Something those schools should consider when chasing the next larger paycheck into the SEC .
I agree that Bob didn't have what it takes to do his primary job. But the job was still possible, albeit challenging, when hired. It's not like back in 2012 this was a forgone conclusion. Charm and skill are kind of important in Bob's job.
UT isn't moving for money. It is moving to protect its brand- to join a premier conference.
The Big 12 needed OU/UT to decide they wanted the Big 12 to be their home in the upcoming super conference era, just like they decided the Big 12 was still for them in 2010. Bob's only job was to get UT to want to make the Big 12 a P3. That will take being a proactive and convincing, skillful communicator. It's college athletics politics mixed with big business. The state of Texas benefits from having two super conferences. Bob was just a career AD, a commissioner from last century's mold.
To do that, on Day 1 Bob's job was to prepare the Big 12 to exploit the looming troubles of the Pac12 and ACC. Texas knew these troubles well- they're why the Pac12 has been chasing UT for 20+ years. UT and OU had a position of power- they owned a P5 conference without the demographic issues that will be the death of the Pac12. The Pac12 strongly considered Big 12 leftovers this summer, and still may need them to survive. Working with the networks, the top brands of the Pac12 are worth more in the Big 12 with OUT than they are in the current Pac12. They need the time zone and exposure to areas in which college football is popular. Had OUT not occurred last summer, and Bob the right man for the job in 2012, this summer would be like 2010, except with rumors of Pac12 getting picked apart by the Big 12. Start with the Arizona schools that are at risk of not having a landing spot.
The ACC was more vulnerable when Bob was hired than it is now. I think it a tougher task, but not impossible. There were ACC members at risk of being left out. We never really went after them because we were focused on building a conference of last century, not a P3 super conference. The SEC didn't start with OUT- they started with the weakest links, A&M and MU.
The A&M leak is interesting. Yeah, it prevented a new Big 12 deal going to market with OUT, but potentially cost ESPN a lot of money with the CFP. Once it is leaked, there is no going back. I always wondered if the SEC didn't want it out there to prevent the Big 12 from catching on and working with OUT to try in earnest to poach from the Pac12. The Big 12 thought it had more time to work on ASU/Zona
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Bowlsby was a caretaker, not a visionary leader. In a league of schools that didn't really want to do anything radical, he was the right guy. Unfortunately, with the TV money, NIL, CFP expansion, etc... a more radical and proactive/preemptive approach was what they needed. They needed to try to stay ahead of the SEC and B1G, just to keep up with them. And no one had the vision for that.
OuT isn't his fault, although I understand why he kind of has to fall on his sword for it.
I will say that after OuT backstabbed the conference, he has done a good job of laying the groundwork to hold their (and ESPN's) feet to the fire, trying to extract the maximum amount of compensation from them. That's been probably the one clever thing he has done - he lost, but is trying to make it a pyhrric victory for ESPN and OuT.
Was he great? No. Is it all his fault? No.
OuT isn't his fault, although I understand why he kind of has to fall on his sword for it.
I will say that after OuT backstabbed the conference, he has done a good job of laying the groundwork to hold their (and ESPN's) feet to the fire, trying to extract the maximum amount of compensation from them. That's been probably the one clever thing he has done - he lost, but is trying to make it a pyhrric victory for ESPN and OuT.
Was he great? No. Is it all his fault? No.
