Let's bring some common sense to the panic surrounding the Longhorn Network

Texas A&M wants everyone to be upset about the Longhorn Network. Held hostage in the Big 12-2 by state politics, the Aggies are trying to make the best of a bad situation not by being proactive, but by limiting others. You see, Bill Byrne, the AD of A&M is on the record as saying that a single school having its own network is not viable (“If you think about it, a separate school network does not work unless it's public television, and they need all kinds of institutional and federal government funding. Last time I checked, the college athletic departments are not eligible" “(Texas) could have had their own network for the last 14 years of the Big 12 and so could we or any member of the conference. Our friends have been bringing their Longhorn Sports Network television mic flags around for years. Their stand alone network has still not happened yet.” “Even ESPN does not have enough live programming to fill its' schedule each day.”)......and then Texas landed a 20 year/$300 million deal with ESPN. There are countless internet conspiracy theories running wild which will tell you that ESPN grossly overpaid Texas to prevent super-conferences from forming. Personally, I think it is comical that a bunch of waiters and backhoe operators posting on college football message boards claim to know more about making money in sports broadcasting than the most profitable entity in the Disney empire. This issue is awash in misinformation and hysteria. It is time for a common sense look at the situation, especially the issue of the LHN broadcasting high school football games.


People on the internet are very upset that "the University of Texas will be broadcasting high school football games." Let's make this clear, UT will never broadcast a single high school football game. ESPN completely owns the LHN. Various ESPN networks have been broadcasting high school football games for years and the NCAA is fine with this. ESPN employees will be choosing which high school games to broadcast and UT employees will have nothing to do with these decisions. Hyperbolic message board posters have been claiming that broadcasting high school football games is the pinnacle of Longhorn greed when, truth be told, the University of Texas makes the same amount of money whether the LHN broadcasts high school football 24 hours a day, the Jeffersons 24 hours a day or dead air 24 hours a day. This is purely an ESPN decision about an ESPN network. 


Of course, the maroon masses will exclaim to you, this is all about recruiting. They want you to believe this is a perfectly crafted scheme to put a stranglehold on recruiting Texas high school football players. Because, what the University of Texas will do, is televise the best players and then they will all come to Austin, right? Let's all take a deep breath and look at the facts. The state of Texas cranks out roughly 400 FBS level football players a year. In any given season, the University of Texas can sign about 20. Now, Texas has a solid track record of getting top shelf recruiting classes pre-LHN. Take the current recruiting class for example, coming off an abortion of a season, Texas already has 18 commits (a low # compared to previous recruiting years). Is ESPN's massive investment really a conspiracy to broadcast particular high school games so that the Longhorns can nail down another 2 or 3 kids once the season starts? Really? Couldn't kids feign interest in Texas just to get televised and then commit somewhere else? You can play reindeer games with hypothetical recruiting based scenarios all day but this is really about money. ESPN wants to get the most out of their investment and people in Texas will watch televised high school football.


The funniest aspect of this argument is the Aggie fear of games being picked up on the LHN and those games not being able to be viewed by non-subscribers. This is hilarious on many fronts. First off, no major college football program had fewer of its own games televised last season than Texas A&M. Bill Byrne's quest for sellouts and stadium related revenue has infuriated the Aggie faithful for years. Since most residents in the state of Texas will probably get the LHN as part of their basic package, had it been around last season, Aggie fans would have seen almost as many LHN games as regionally televised Aggie games during 2010. But what about out-of-state fans? The examples I could give to you of out-of-state fans being unable to see particular games because of network related shenanigans are too numerous to mention here. The LHN will be breaking no new ground in this area. 


The Longhorn network does not allow Texas to recruit more football players than anyone else. The Longhorn Network does not pay the University of Texas more money if it broadcasts high school football. The Longhorn Network will not have a single University of Texas employee on staff. These are the salient points to reflect on as you read doom and gloom LHN diatribes all over the net. The Aggies real fear is about the money coming from the LHN, and that money is coming no matter what. There is nothing they can do about it except complain. I hope Bill Byrne hears Matthew Mcconaughey's voice every time he writes a personal check to his cable company and fattens the coffers of the University of Texas.