The University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma will officially leave the Big 12 for the SEC in July of 2024, one year earlier than initially expected — but not without paying a hefty price.
Texas and Oklahoma reached an agreement with the Big 12 to pay $100 million in compensation for lost revenue stemming from the early departure. The Big 12’s press release said that “OU and UT will be able to partially offset” that cost “with future revenues” in the SEC.
“As I have consistently stated, the Conference would only agree to an early withdrawal if it was in our best interest for Oklahoma and Texas to depart prior to June 30, 2025,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said in a statement. “By reaching this agreement, we are now able to accelerate our new beginning as a 12-team league and move forward in earnest with our initiatives and future planning.”
The Big 12 will add four new teams this summer: BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati, and Houston. Of those schools, BYU and Cincinnati sponsor both men’s and women’s swimming & diving, while Houston sponsors a women’s only program. That means that the net change will be a bigger Big 12 Swimming & Diving Championships.
The 2024-25 season will be a season of significant change in the college sports world. With Texas and Oklahoma as new members of the SEC, UCLA and USC as new members of the Big Ten, and the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams, the NCAA landscape will have shifted dramatically.
A league source tells SwimSwam that Texas is in line to host the 2026 SEC Swimming & Diving Championships, pending a final vote of the conference’s athletic directors.
Big 12 swimming will be completely different without Texas.
I wonder who will dominate Men’s and Women’s.
I’m still shocked that a school as rich as UT and with that incredible swim history has not renovated their facility. Aside from the new outdoor facility, the inside is simply OLD. They did not even show us the locker rooms on our official visit, which says a lot!
On our visit, we didn’t really care about that. We wanted to hear what Eddie, Wyatt, and the current team had to say.
Agreed, that is key, more about Wyatt than Eddie, as Eddie won’t be there much longer, obviously. It’s just shocking to see those facilities compared to other programs that have far far smaller athletic budgets.
I don’t think Horns will change their conference meet strategy. The only thing anyone remembers is the natty.
time for the Sooners to renovate the Case Swim complex and revive the team. they’ve still got a beautiful long course outdoor pool right next door
Start looking for 2025 SEC tickets. They may be the hardest ticket to come by in a long time.
Men’s NCAA tickets sold out in 3 minutes this year, going to be tough to top that for a swim meet.
I just feel bad for the remaining men’s teams, it was already a smaller meet but now…
There will actually be more men’s teams coming out of this than going in, and it will be way more competitive. In isolation (aka ignoring broader impacts on college athletics, financial ramifications for athletics departments, etc.) this will make a better swimming conference on net.
When the best team leaves the conference the conference does not get better. More teams and new champions yes. Better no.
The exit fee of $50mm each for both Texas and Oklahoma to leave early is shockingly low. Maryland paid close to the same – after kicking and screaming about it – to leave the ACC a decade ago. Texas would have paid anything to not suck at football any Ionger & Oklahoma needed this move more desperately than Maryland did to leave the ACC at a time their athletic department was nearly insolvent following financial messes left by two borderline corrupt.
It won’t even be that high. That’s a press release,
Keep in mind, this penalty was just to leave an extra year early.
Maryland was penalized individually. This is the conference being penalized for taking them early. But they’ll make that 100 million plus some by getting them early I guess.
I think ultimately everyone involved wanted this to happen. Big 12 just had to get their pound of flesh (and rightfully so). But I think even they were ready to move on negotiating the future of the conference.
I think $100 million is a reasonable price.
Good riddance…