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Originally Posted by Saul Good
That's the entire premise of the question; do you re-evaluate the GOR in order to attract new members.
Your country club analogy isn't really accurate. If other, more exclusive country clubs are expanding and driving lesser clubs out of business while yours has been bleeding members, you might drop the initial membership fee in order to attract potential members.
It comes down to the fact that the Big 12 is strong today, but they are very vulnerable when the GOR expires because they haven't done anything to make themselves more attractive to the anchor members.
The Longhorn Network contract expires shortly before the GOR. At the moment, it doesn't look like ESPN would have any reason to renew that money pit. Suddenly, nothing is keeping Texas from bolting to the PAC.
I have a tough time believing Texas remains in the conference long term unless some big programs join the fold. Right now, the only team in the conference Texas cares about having on the schedule is Oklahoma, and Oklahoma would probably move with Texas, anyway.
The Big 12 is in a pretty good spot if the ACC gets raided, but time is on the side of the "orphans" in that scenario. If they can wait out the Big 12 GOR, all bets are off.
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Texas doesn't want to leave. That's the biggest flaw. They want to remain "Texas centric". They don't want to go to some far off coast to play, they don't need to. As long as Texas makes equivalent money, they aren't looking to go somewhere else.
I know everyone thinks Texas wants to leave, but they really gain very little by doing so. The PAC 10 is now the PAC 12, and there is a strong voting bloc AGAINST expansion. CU, Utah, and the Arizona schools don't want their access to California diminished, which under most expansion scenarios, happens. The PAC would have to do something really radical, like got to 20, in order to break up that voting bloc.
Other schools are not going to dictate the terms, at least not on their own. They might go through the networks and say we'll come if these are the terms. Then it would be up to the networks to put the necessary pressure on the conference, if they felt like it was beneficial. My point it, its not up to the schools, and there is nothing inherently dissatisfying about the GoR issue.
What most potential schools have hesitancy about is being on the far end of a Texas based conference. They're concerned about scheduling. They're concerned about "who comes with". The GoR is not a major factor here. Their desire to remain a eastern centric conference is.