Eyeing the SEC, Oklahoma and Texas Plan to Leave the Big 12

Starting what would be the most consequential reordering of college sports conferences in about a decade, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas told the Big 12 on Monday that they would leave the league in the coming years.

The formal notifications involved only media rights and were required under the Big 12’s bylaws, but they opened the way for the schools to move to the Southeastern Conference, which could swell into a 16-team league and sweep up far greater power, wealth and athletic prestige.

Oklahoma and Texas, on-field rivals but tethered to each other in this shift, said in a joint statement that they would not renew their existing television deals after they expire in 2025. The schools said they “intend to honor their existing grant of rights agreements,” but lawyers and broader forces in college sports could ultimately let them exit those Big 12-connected contracts far sooner.

Media rights are by far the largest source of revenue for college leagues, and a decision to leave a conference’s signature deal is tantamount to exiting the conference itself.

The universities, which could earn millions more a year if they are part of the SEC’s television package, seemed to acknowledge the coming chaos when they said they would “continue to monitor the rapidly evolving collegiate athletics landscape as they consider how best to position their athletics programs for the future.”

Although the decisions by Oklahoma and Texas will have the greatest effects on the Big 12 and, most likely, the SEC, their choices will drive a process known as realignment that can scramble the membership rosters of conferences from coast to coast. Every year brings some shifts inside the sprawling N.C.A.A., which has about 1,100 member schools, but transitions from one Power 5 conference to another are far less common. When they do occur, they carry outsize financial and competitive consequences.

Much like coaching changes and player commitments, plans for conference switches can collapse before they are made final. In 2010, Texas and Oklahoma both weighed moving to what is currently the Pac-12, a central story line in that era’s round of realignment.

But Monday’s notices to the Big 12 are among the strongest possible indications that the universities expect new deals to materialize imminently. Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said the decisions by the schools left the Big 12’s other members “disappointed.”

“We recognize that intercollegiate athletics is experiencing rapid change and will most likely look much different in 2025 than it does currently,” he added in a statement.

The SEC, the country’s premier college football conference, has been at the heart of what Texas last Wednesday unconvincingly played down as “rumors or speculation” about the futures of the Longhorns and the Sooners. The league already includes some of the mightiest brands in football, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Louisiana State, but drawing in Oklahoma and Texas would add two proud, tradition-bound programs.

And it would almost certainly enrich the league, which has declined to comment, in dramatic ways.

In December, the SEC announced a deal with ESPN that will, according to people familiar with its terms, pay the league about $300 million a year. The additions of Oklahoma and Texas would give the conference new leverage for a rights agreement whose value could skyrocket with the arrival of two powerhouses.

Indeed, one of the thorniest subjects surrounding the expected defections of Oklahoma and Texas has been how much the universities might pay to the Big 12 and its schools in a buyout agreement. Like all other Big 12 schools, Texas and Oklahoma agreed to give the conference control of their most lucrative television rights, including football and most men’s and women’s basketball games, which the conference then sold to ESPN and Fox in a $2.6 billion deal that goes through the 2024-25 school year.

Under the Big 12’s bylaws, the schools have to pay tens of millions of dollars each — and forfeit tens of millions of dollars more — if they leave the conference before the rights agreement ends. Negotiations could substantially whittle those costs and free Oklahoma and Texas to play elsewhere earlier.

A college sports executive with knowledge of the deliberations said that Oklahoma and Texas had contacted the SEC months ago, but that talks between the league and the schools had accelerated more recently. The SEC’s rules require that 11 of its 14 universities vote in support of a school that applies for membership.

Just one SEC school — Texas A&M — has voiced public opposition so far.

“We want to be the only SEC program in the state of Texas,” Ross Bjork, Texas A&M’s athletic director, told reporters last week. He said the university should “have our own stand-alone identity in our own conference.”

But the fury of the Aggies is poised to have only so much of a shelf life. Over the weekend, after Texas A&M’s board called a Monday evening meeting to discuss college athletics, the university’s president, M. Katherine Banks, said the school looked forward to “continued success in our SEC partnership for many years to come.”

The Big 12’s future is less clear, and the planned exits of Oklahoma and Texas, among the league’s founding members about 27 years ago, may prove a crippling blow. The other Big 12 members are Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Texas Christian, Texas Tech and West Virginia.

Although Baylor and Kansas have marquee basketball programs and Iowa State has been rising in football, Oklahoma and Texas are the conference’s main attractions despite the more than a decade since either won a national title in football. Oklahoma has appeared in (and lost) four College Football Playoff semifinal games since the 2015 season, and Texas, despite a run of gridiron mediocrity, has remained one of the sport’s most prominent teams.

Both schools also have strong records in sports besides football and basketball. Oklahoma is a hub for men’s and women’s gymnastics, and the Sooners won the 2021 national championship in softball. Texas recently won the 2020-21 Directors’ Cup, awarded annually to the country’s top college athletic program, after taking home titles in men’s swimming and diving, women’s rowing and women’s tennis.

Conference and university leaders have been in closed-door discussions in recent days about the way forward for the remnants of the Big 12, and officials from other leagues are watching closely to see whether they might want to expand their own ranks.

Kevin Warren, the Big Ten commissioner, said on Thursday that he and others were “constantly evaluating what’s in the best interests of the conference.” George Kliavkoff, the new Pac-12 commissioner, told The Mercury News that he was not actively recruiting any schools to join the conference, but that “we’d be foolish not to listen if schools call us.”

Bowlsby asserted Monday that the Big 12’s “remaining eight institutions will work together in a collaborative manner to thoughtfully and strategically position the Big 12 Conference for continued success, both athletically and academically, long into the future.”