It didn’t matter that Kansas had won more basketball games than all but two programs in the history of the sport. It didn’t matter that the school had been the home of James Naismith, Phog Allen, Wilt Chamberlain and Danny Manning.
All that mattered was Texas football. By a bizarre twist of fate – fate’s not the right word; it was more by a bizarre twist of the economy – the future of Kansas’ storied basketball program lay in the hands of decision makers at the University of Texas because Texas football, to put the situation in the simplest terms possible, is worth millions upon millions of dollars in revenue more than Kansas basketball.
It’s not that the traditions of either outweigh the other, but with the absurd television revenue from football driving realignment talks, the Jayhawks were on the verge of being left in the cold. Take, for example, the football revenue against the basketball revenue from the Southeastern Conference, which tried to lure Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Texas, and was rumored to have some contact with Kansas. In the SEC, football made $150.5 million in 2008, in contrast to the just $58.5 million that basketball brought in for the league.
It’s no mistake the SEC is making bundles of cash in football, though. Thanks to some brilliant maneuvering by commissioner Mike Slive, the league negotiated a television deal worth almost 3.5 times more than the Big 12’s eight-year, $480 million dollar deal that had been signed just two years earlier.
It was that, the Big Ten Network, which has seen remarkable success as the only league-specific television network after initial skepticism, and the imminent restructuring of the Pac-10’s television deal that led to the panic of conference realignment. There were greener pastures in every conference from the SEC to even the ACC, which negotiated a multibillion dollar television deal of its own in 2009.
Those football television deals, coupled with money from the BCS — which trickles down exclusively to conferences, unlike the money from the NCAA Tournament in basketball — meant that football was king in realignment.
“The thing that bugs me the most about it was how this has just been strictly based on money. Not education or scholarships or anything like that,” said Kevin Meyer, a senior from Lenexa. “These are college athletes and they are also students. And that’s just a small part of the student population.”
But those television deals also wound up being the Jayhawks’ savior. Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe, with the conference’s cable deal coming up for restructuring next year (though the network package is still locked down through 2016), assured Texas and the other schools considering defection that they’d receive equal money in the new deal.
Kansas and the other four schools that were under threat of being left behind, took matters into their own hands. Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, Iowa State and Missouri pledged to Beebe that, should Texas, Oklahoma or Texas A&M not reach the money guaranteed them by other conferences, the left-behind five would pool together and make up the difference between promised and actual revenue.
But if the realignment beast rears its head once more, the same issues could wreck the Jayhawks. Basketball may be king at Kansas, but football is king in realignment. And the Jayhawks could just get left behind.
Rex Walters, former KU basketball player and now San Francisco University basketball coach, said he thought realignment would not affect basketball recruitment. “I would think the basketball conference got better,” he said. “No offense to Nebraska and Colorado.”
He said he thought that Ted Boyle would be great at Colorado, though.
“Kansas is a national power; Bill can recruit, let’s get that from the get go,” he said.
As for football, he said Kansas would have to recruit nationally from states like California, Florida and Texas. He said Kansas football doesn’t have the same name recognition. “But they can sustain,” he said.