Oklahoma

The Big 12 is open to further expansion, commissioner Brett Yormark said Friday, as the league prepares to welcome four new members, including the University of Houston, on July 1.

Expansion was among the topics during the Big 12’s three-day business meetings that wrapped up Friday at The Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

“We have a plan,” Yormark said on a video conference call with reporters. “As I’ve said all along, we have an appetite to be a national conference in our makeup from coast to coast.

“That being said, we love our current composition and the four new schools that are joining next month. However, if the opportunity presents itself to create value, we will pursue it.”

The Big 12 has shown interest in adding more members with the departures of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC in 2024. The league will expand to 14 schools in July with the addition of UH, BYU, Central Florida and Cincinnati.

There continues to be instability with conference realignment with UCLA and USC set to leave for the Big Ten and the Pac-12’s ongoing media rights negotiations casting an uncertain future for that league. The Big 12 has been linked as a possible destination for Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah.

The Big 12 could also consider basketball-only schools Gonzaga and UConn, adding to its cache that is already regarded as the strongest men’s basketball conference in the nation.

“We do believe in the upside of basketball moving forward as a collective group,” Yormark said. “We think it’s undervalued. There’s a chance for us to double down as the No. 1 basketball conference in America, but football is the driver and we all know that. We’re going to consider all options.”

Yormark said the Big 12 will take “guiding principles” into consideration when looking at possible expansion candidates, among them academic alignment, leadership, cultural fit, geography, and athletic performance.

Texas Tech president Lawrence Schovanec, chair of the Big 12’s board of directors, said the conference’s presidents and chancellors are taking “a very open attitude” to expansion.

See here for the previous update. Nothing really new here other than the mention of UConn as a basketball addition, but the passage of time and Colorado’s open interest in exploring its options make this timely. Remember when there was a couple of years in between major conference reshufflings, which provided the veneer or temporary calm? Yeah, we’re over that. Hold onto your butts.

There’s nothing like ERIC

Apr 2nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Be careful what you seek to destroy, Republicans.

With some Texas Republicans pushing the state to abandon one its best tools for preventing voter fraud — a coalition of states that share voting roll data to weed out duplicate and suspicious registrations — the secretary of state’s office is trying to discern if it can build a replacement.

But the effort could easily stall or take years, experts say. Similar efforts in other states over the past two decades have not worked, or have been shut down, because they lacked bipartisan support from multiple states and access to the kind of national data that produces accurate cross-state voter list matching — all of which the Electronic Information Registration Center, or ERIC, spent years developing.

The push to have Texas become the latest state to withdraw from ERIC, a long-standing effort by nearly 30 states, is rooted in a yearlong misinformation campaign that spread through right-wing media platforms and advocacy groups.

If the state decides to leave the program but fails to produce a similar tool, Texas’ voter rolls will inevitably be less accurate, which could fuel claims of voter fraud, experts say. That could increase costs for counties who’d be more likely to send election mailers to voters who have moved out of state or died, because outdated information would linger on the voter rolls. And the state, too, would spend more than it would save by leaving the program because it would need to build the technical infrastructure and meet the federal security requirements needed to protect sensitive data in order to make an alternative viable.

Sam Taylor, a spokesperson for the Texas secretary of state’s office, declined to comment on the feasibility of developing a new alternative to ERIC. He told Votebeat, however, that at least Georgia and Nevada — states that are currently members of ERIC and supportive of the program — and Oklahoma have expressed interest in working with Texas on the project. Taylor said research is also underway on the cost of developing such a system.

In no small part, experts note, the coalition ERIC built over many years worked, because member states — led by both Democrats and Republicans — agreed to come together in a good-faith effort to share the necessary data and information to help maintain voter rolls across state lines. But in recent months, political pressure on Republican-led states has put the coalition at risk. Last year, Louisiana, then Alabama, followed by Florida, West Virginia, Missouri, and most recently Ohio and Iowa, announced they would depart. Texas could be next: The Texas Legislature is already considering various bills to leave ERIC.

And the state’s attempt at replacing the program both would not be an efficient solution and could have implications for the states that remain in ERIC by making it harder for states to join together across party lines, said Marc Meredith, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on election administration. Meredith has also done research on voter list maintenance.

“It would be incredibly disappointing to end up with basically two versions of the same thing because the value of data grows exponentially as you can make more and more comparisons between states,” he said, and added that by leaving the program, Texas will deprive itself of all the other states’ data while preventing the other states from obtaining data on more than 16 million registered voters in the state. “It’s not like if you split the world and have 25 states in one [program] and 25 states in another, [it] would be equally good. It’s actually more than double the bad.”

See here and here for the background, and read the rest for more. To be clear, there are plenty of worse and more damaging things that the Republicans have teed up for this session. It’s just that this is such a clear example of a perfectly working thing that Republicans want to destroy because a few reality-denying crackpots hate it for completely unhinged reasons and none of the rest of them has the guts to push back. In its place there is nothing that comes close to matching what it does, there are no tangible plans for even a stopgap solution at hand, and the most likely long-term solution is something that will be measurably worse. And this is a thing that furthers one of their supposed top priorities! It’s like being a fossil fuels advocate and also seeking to pass laws to ban fracking and refineries. I got nothin’.

Oklahoma Supreme Court upholds abortion rights

Mar 22nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Of interest, for obvious reasons.

A divided Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a portion of the state’s near-total ban on abortion, ruling women have a right to abortion when pregnancy risks their health, not just in a medical emergency.

It was a narrow win for abortion rights advocates since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

The court ruled that a woman has the right under the state Constitution to receive an abortion to preserve her life if her doctor determines that continuing the pregnancy would endanger it due to a condition she has or is likely to develop during the pregnancy. Previously, the right to an abortion could only take place in the case of a medical emergency.

“Requiring one to wait until there is a medical emergency would further endanger the life of the pregnant woman and does not serve a compelling state interest,” the ruling states.

In the 5-4 ruling, the court said the state law uses both the words “preserve” and “save” the mother’s life as an exception to the abortion ban.

“The language ‘except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency’ is much different from ‘preserve her life,'” according to the ruling.

“Absolute certainty,” by the physician that the mother’s life could be endangered, “is not required, however, mere possibility or speculation is insufficient” to determine that an abortion is needed to preserve the woman’s life, according to the ruling.

The court, however, declined to rule on whether the state Constitution grants the right to an abortion for other reasons.

The court ruled in the lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood, Tulsa Women’s Reproductive Clinic and others challenging the state laws passed after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

I trust the parallel to the Texas lawsuit is clear. Slate adds some details.

Oklahoma outlaws abortion through multiple statutes, both civil and criminal, and these bans became enforceable after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. One of the statutes contains an ostensible exception for the “life of a pregnant woman.” But as the court explained on Tuesday, this exception is extraordinarily narrow: It permits termination only when the patient is “in actual and present danger” of death. According to the statute, it is not enough for a doctor to determine that the pregnancy will kill her at some point in the future; that peril must be imminent. If a doctor provides an abortion before the patient is at sufficient risk of death, they face a $100,000 fine and 10 years’ imprisonment.

Reproductive rights advocates challenged this ban under the Oklahoma Constitution. Their lawsuit was risky: Five justices of the Oklahoma Supreme Court were appointed by Republicans while four were appointed by Democrats. But GOP appointee James R. Winchester crossed over to create a 5–4 majority in support of “a limited right to an abortion.” The majority found that this right was supported by two provisions of the state constitution that grant “all persons” the right to “life” and “liberty.” Reviewing Oklahoma’s history, the majority explained that the state’s abortion regime had always “recognized a woman’s right to obtain an abortion in order to preserve her life,” from before statehood through admission to the union and right on up until 2021, when the present law was enacted.

Because the right to abortion to preserve the patient’s life is “deeply rooted” in Oklahoma history, the majority held, any restriction on that right is subject to strict scrutiny, bolstered by a compelling state interest. “Requiring one to wait until there is a medical emergency,” however, “does not serve a compelling state interest” because it “would further endanger the life of the pregnant woman.” The majority therefore declared that portion of the law “void and unenforceable” and announced a new standard: Abortion is permitted whenever a doctor has “determined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty or probability that the continuation of the pregnancy will endanger the woman’s life.” That danger may arise from “the pregnancy itself” or “a medical condition that the woman is either currently suffering from or likely to suffer from during the pregnancy.”

The scope of this standard is not entirely clear, but it suggests that a patient can undergo an abortion if the doctor determines there will be a threat to her life at some future point “during the pregnancy.” This standard is different from that in Texas, where doctors are waiting until pregnant patients are on death’s door rather than terminating when conditions emerge that could be fatal later in the pregnancy. As the majority noted, “absolute certainty” that the condition would kill a patient if untreated “is not required,” though “mere possibility or speculation is insufficient.” In a long concurrence, Justice Yvonne Kauger, joined by Justices James Edmondson and Doug Combs, tried to clarify the new rule. A physician, she wrote, need not “wait until their patient has a seizure, a stroke, experiences multiple organ failure, goes septic, or goes into a coma” before terminating a dangerous pregnancy. The reasonable likelihood of life-threatening conditions justifies an immediate abortion.

Kauger pointed to a new Texas lawsuit to illustrate what this standard does not require. The plaintiffs in that case were forced to wait until they suffered sepsis, hemorrhage, and other horrific ailments before doctors would terminate. Such a narrow exception, Kauger wrote, affords women “fewer rights than a convicted murderer on death row,” imposing “a death sentence” without “due process or any provision for clemency or pardon.” (Kauger also included a long overview of women’s near-absolute denial of rights through most of American history, noting that Oklahoma’s historical abortion laws were passed at a time when men could legally beat their wives and women could not vote or serve in office.)

As that story notes, the Supreme Court of North Dakota allowed a block on its state’s abortion ban to remain in place while a lawsuit over it plays out. It too concluded that the state constitution provided for “a fundamental right to an abortion in the limited instances of life-saving and health-preserving circumstances”. Note that these are narrow exceptions to those states’ bans, but they do represent a step forward for abortion access post-Dobbs. Just having doctors not feel like their own lives are at risk when making this decision should make a difference.

There’s an irony here in that Oklahoma was one of five states to pass an anti–Obamacare “health care freedom” amendment to their state constitution, which has now been used to argue against state abortion bans in Ohio and Wyoming as well. (Wyoming just passed a law to ban abortion pills; we’ll have to see what happens when that inevitably gets challenged.) A lot of this litigation is still ongoing so it’s hard to say exactly where we’ll end up, and these states could always try to amend those amendments to craft an abortion exception. But for now at least, there’s a path forward in some red states to at least allow for minimal access.

None of this bears directly on Texas, of course. Each state has their own laws, Texas did not amend its constitution as those five other states did, and as we well know Supreme Court justices of all stripes can be and are political animals. I make no prediction about what will happen with the litigation here. What we do know is that similar lawsuits have found success elsewhere. I’ll take my hope where I can get it.

Oklahoma rejects recreational marijuana

Mar 11th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Oh, well. At least you can still gamble there.

Oklahoma voters rejected a state question Tuesday to allow for the recreational use of marijuana, following a late blitz of opposition from faith leaders, law enforcement and prosecutors.

Oklahoma would have become the 22nd state to legalize adult use of cannabis and join conservative states like Montana and Missouri that have approved similar proposals in recent years. Many conservative states have also rejected the idea, including Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota last year.

Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and many of the state’s GOP legislators, including nearly every Republican senator, opposed the idea. Former Republican Gov. Frank Keating, an ex-FBI agent, and Terri White, the former head of the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, led the “no” campaign.

“We’re pleased the voters have spoken,” said Pat McFerron, a Republican political strategist who ran the opposition campaign. “We think this sends a clear signal that voters are not happy with the recreational nature of our medicinal system. We also think it shows voters recognize the criminal aspects, as well as the need for addressing mental health needs of the state.”

The “no” side was outspent more than 20-to-1, with supporters of the initiative spending more than $4.9 million, compared to about $219,000 against, last-minute campaign finance reports show.

State Question 820, the result of a signature gathering drive last year, was the only item on the statewide ballot, and early results showed heavy opposition in rural areas.

“We don’t want a stoned society,” Keating said Monday, flanked by district attorneys and law enforcement officers from across the state.

The proposal, if passed, would have allowed anyone over the age of 21 to purchase and possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana, plus concentrates and marijuana-infused products. Recreational sales would have been subjected to a 15% excise tax on top of the standard sales tax. The excise tax would be used to help fund local municipalities, the court system, public schools, substance abuse treatment and the state’s general revenue fund.

As the story notes, Oklahoma allows medical marijuana and has had a pretty good experience with it, which was one of the catalysts for this effort. I saw an AP story on Monday that had hyped this vote, but obviously it didn’t turn out as supporters wanted it to. That’s unfortunate for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that it would make Texas even more of an outlier in its resistance to reforming its punitive old pot laws. Guess we’ll have to find some other motivation for that. Anyway, sorry Sooners. At least it’s a shorter drive from where you are to Colorado. CNN and the Dallas Observer have more.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, had this measure passed I had planned to title the post about it “Toke-lahoma”. It is everybody’s loss that I am not able to do this.)

Big XII now looking to expand

Feb 14th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Probably a good idea to try, as a defensive measure if nothing else.

The Big 12’s next step is clear after the early exit of Texas and Oklahoma was agreed upon Thursday night. The conference now plans to aggressively pursue expansion in some form, sources tell CBS Sports.

This is the culmination of a three-pronged vision put forth by commissioner Brett Yormark once he took office in August 2022. The first two steps — negotiating a new TV deal and resolving the Texas-Oklahoma situation — have been achieved. His full attention now turns to adding more teams to the Big 12.

Whether it will be accomplished is another issue. However, in Yormark’s short history leading the league, it’s proven best not to bet against him. Almost immediately after USC and UCLA announced they were leaving for the Big Ten, the Big 12 showed interest in the Pac-12’s four corners schools (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah).

[…]

More recently, Yormark has advocated for Gonzaga joining as a basketball-only member. Even though the financial gain for the Big 12 would be minimal by adding the Zags, Yormark sees a future increase in college basketball rights as streaming giants get more involved in sports. Gonzaga has options (the Pac-12 and Big East) as it appears motivated to finally make a move to major conference.

The reason for any Big 12 expansion: moving West. Yormark seeks game inventory in the Pacific Time Zone, which would allow the once Midwest-based league to stretch from coast to coast. More importantly, it would give the Big 12 a presence in all four primary television “windows” — noon, 3:30, primetime and late night (based on the Eastern Time Zone).

Going forward, the SEC and Big Ten will dominate those first three windows. Having a presence in the fourth window would give the Big 12 some level of exclusivity. (ESPN is also interested in partnering with the Pac-12 for late-night games.)

While it’s not clear whether the Big 12 could get pro rata (equal value of $31.66 million per year) for any new members, it may not matter that much. Schools are desperate to improve their standing in what might be the last round of realignment for the next decade.

For example, industry sources have speculated both SMU and San Diego State might accept less than a full share if they join the Pac-12. SDSU remains a candidate for the Big 12 if a Pac-12 move falls through. CBS Sports reported this week a new Pac-12 TV deal may hinge on adding those two schools.

Any Big 12 expansion continues to revolve around that Pac-12 TV deal.

See here for the last update. Basically, whether the Big XII can poach these Pac 12 schools will likely determine whether the PAC 12 can continue as an entity or go the way of the Southwest Conference. If they can hold onto those four schools and maybe add the two others mentioned, they’re still viable for now. Other than maybe Gonzaga as basketball-only – which might lead to scheduling weirdness unless they can get a second school with a similar sports profile to join then – it’s not clear to me what the other attractive options for the Big XII are. On the other hand, in the immediate aftermath of UT and OU bailing out there was speculation that the Big XII might not be long for this world, so at least they seem to be in better shape than they were a year or so ago. Until further notice, though, the wolf is presumed to be at the door. May the odds be ever in your favor.

Actually, UT and OU will join the SEC in 2024

Feb 11th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Reports of their not-early departure were greatly exaggerated.

Texas and Oklahoma have reached an agreement in principle to leave the Big 12 after the 2023-24 athletic year, the league announced Thursday, allowing the schools to join the Southeastern Conference one full season ahead of schedule.

The agreement is subject to final approval by the UT and OU governing boards, a formality that will pave the way for the two flagship schools to join the SEC on July 1, 2024.

As part of the agreement, UT and OU will owe combined $100 million in “foregone distributable revenues” which the two schools “will be able to partially offset with future revenues,” according to the Big 12.

“The conference would only agree to an early withdrawalif it was in our best interest for Oklahoma and Texas to depart prior to June 30, 2025,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said. “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.”

Yormark, who has been on the job seven months, added that he looks forward to “bright days ahead for the Big 12 Conference.”

The Big 12 is set to add four new schools — the University of Houston, UCF, Cincinnati and BYU — on July 1. With an exit date set, the Big 12 could look at future expansion; there’s reportedly interest in adding Gonzaga in men’s basketball, along with talks regarding four Pac-12 schools: Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.

[…]

Texas, Oklahoma, the Big 12 and its two media partners reportedly hit a snag in their ongoing negotiations as the parties quarreled over how Fox would offset the expected financial hit it would take from losing as many as eight football games featuring the Longhorns and Sooners, two perennial ratings juggernauts.

In the end, the parties were able to iron out an exit agreement for that would distribute money to the Big 12’s remaining programs and keep Fox and ESPN executives (and their advertising partners) satisfied.

See here for the previous and now totally wrong entry. ESPN, which had reported the likelihood of UT and OU sticking around in the Big XII until the end of the current TV deal in 2025, adds this bit of context:

On July 1, the Big 12 will officially add BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston and it will compete as a 14-team league for the upcoming season. Sources told ESPN recently that both parties were interested in finding a way for the schools to leave early, but when the athletic directors and presidents met last week in Dallas, there was no resolution. It was a quick change that even surprised some leadership within the league on Thursday afternoon.

Surprise, indeed. In the end, the solution was the same as the obstacle, which is to say money. The current Big XII schools that are not leaving will all reap a nice bounty out of this, and as we see there may be more shuffling about to happen with the PAC 12 in shaky condition as USC and UCLA prepare to depart. Never a dull moment, that’s for sure. CBS Sports has more.

Looking like no early entry into the SEC for UT and OU

Feb 7th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

It’s always about the money. Which, to be fair, is pretty substantial in this case.

The negotiations for Oklahoma and Texas to leave the Big 12 a year early and join the SEC in 2024 have stalled and a deal is not expected to come to fruition, sources told ESPN on Friday morning.

After weeks of negotiations, Texas and Oklahoma are still slated to join the SEC in 2025. Sources said the parties couldn’t come to terms amid a complex negotiation involving two schools, two networks (ESPN and Fox) and the Big 12.

Sources said the sides couldn’t agree on how to create equitable value for what Fox would lose in 2024 — the equivalent of seven football games featuring Oklahoma and Texas that command premium advertising.

The negotiations heated up over the past few days, with the Big 12 meetings late this week doubling as an unofficial deadline to get a deal done.

The timeline in play — the 2024 season — leaves some ambiguity and small potential for a Hail Mary revival, but the strong expectation remains that Oklahoma and Texas will play in the 14-team Big 12 in 2023 and 2024.

“There’s no formal timeline or brink from which you can’t come back,” an industry source said. “But this is where things are right now — a deal is unlikely.”

To be fair, UT and OU were insisting they would remain in the Big XII through 2025, despite the obvious reasons why they’d want to get out earlier than that. I certainly thought that they would find a way to make that happen. The fall of 2024 is still a ways off so anything could happen, but it’s not looking too likely. For the Coog fans out there, that means you’ll get two shots at them on the football field before they buzz off. Better make the most of it while you can.

Winter storm 2023

Feb 3rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

I don’t know if this one will get a name, but I can imagine what a lot of folks are calling it.

Thousands of frustrated Texans shivered in their homes Thursday after more than a day without power, including many in the state capital, as an icy winter storm that has been blamed for at least 10 traffic deaths lingered across much of the southern U.S.

Even as temperatures finally pushed above freezing in Austin — and were expected to climb past 50 degrees (10 Celsius) on Friday — the relief will be just in time for an Arctic front to drop from Canada and threaten northern states. New England in particular is forecast to see the coldest weather in decades, with wind chills that could dive lower than minus 50.

Across Texas, 430,000 customers lacked power Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us. But the failures were most widespread in Austin, where frustration mounted among more than 156,000 customers over 24 hours after their electricity went out, which for many also meant their heat. Power failures have affected about 30% of customers in the city of nearly a million at any given time since Wednesday.

[…]

For many Texans, it was the second time in three years that a February freeze — temperatures were in the 30s Thursday with wind chills below freezing — caused prolonged outages and uncertainty over when the lights would come back on.

As outages dragged on, city officials came under mounting criticism for not providing estimates of when power would be restored and for neglecting to hold a news conference until Thursday. Mayor Kirk Watson said Thursday the city would review communication protocols for future disasters.

Austin Energy at one point estimated that all power would be restored by Friday evening, then later stated Thursday that full restoration would now take “longer than initially anticipated.” Soon after, Watson tweeted, “This is a dynamic situation and change is inevitable but Austin Energy must give folks clear and accurate info so they can plan accordingly.”

Unlike the 2021 blackouts in Texas, when hundreds of people died after the state’s grid was pushed to the brink of total failure because of a lack of generation, the outages in Austin this time were largely the result of frozen equipment and ice-burdened trees and limbs falling on power lines. The city’s utility warned all power may not be restored until Friday as ice continued causing outages even as repairs were finished elsewhere.

“It feels like two steps forward and three steps back,” said Jackie Sargent, general manager of Austin Energy.

School systems in the Dallas and Austin area, plus many in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee, closed Thursday as snow, sleet and freezing rain continued to push through. Public transportation in Dallas also experienced “major delays” early Thursday, according to a statement from Dallas Area Rapid Transit.

The weather has been lousy here in Houston, but it has not been freezing, so we have escaped the worst of this. I feel so bad for everyone in the affected areas. The story says that so far seven people have died on the roads as a result of this storm.

On Twitter, I’ve seen a lot of people talking about the trees on their streets and the sound they make as they collapse under the weight of the ice on them. The Trib covered this as well.

All day and all night after the ice storm struck, Austin residents listened for the cracks, splinters and crashes. Each crack of a falling limb could shut the power off — if their home hadn’t gone dark already.

“It’s a really, really thick layer of ice,” said Jonathan Motsinger, the Central Texas operations department head for Texas A&M Forest Service. “Trees can only support weight to a certain extent, and then they fail.”

Across the Texas Hill Country this week, trees snapped under the weight of ice that accumulated during multiple days of freezing rain. Some of the most iconic trees were among the most severely damaged: live oaks (some of them hundreds of years old), ashe junipers (the scourge of allergy sufferers during “cedar fever” season), cedar elms. As their branches gave way, they took neighboring power lines with them.

“The amount of weight that has accumulated on the vegetation is probably historic, extreme,” Austin Energy general manager Jackie Sargent said during a Thursday press conference.

Ice can increase the weight of tree branches up to 30 times, said Kerri Dunn, a communications manager for Oncor. The utility reported that almost 143,000 of its customers in North, Central and West Texas were without power Thursday afternoon.

“The amount of weight that has accumulated on the vegetation is probably historic, extreme,” Austin Energy general manager Jackie Sargent said during a Thursday press conference.

Ice can increase the weight of tree branches up to 30 times, said Kerri Dunn, a communications manager for Oncor. The utility reported that almost 143,000 of its customers in North, Central and West Texas were without power Thursday afternoon.

[…]

Austin has almost 34 million trees in the city, according to an online tree census maintained by Texas A&M Forest Service and the U.S. Forest Service.

“It’s a big point of pride,” said Keith Mars, who oversees the city of Austin’s Community Tree Preservation Division.

Mars said that shade from the trees saves Austin residents millions of dollars a year in energy costs by cooling homes during hot summer days.

“Trees are infrastructure,” Mars said. “How much maintenance and how much care we provide, so that [the trees] can continue providing those other benefits, is the kind of tradeoff that we all have.”

I don’t really have a point to make here. I hope everyone who has had to endure this week’s terrible weather has made it through all right, and that there are enough trees left over to keep things shaded. The Austi Chronicle has more.

The West Texas earthquake problem

Jul 25th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

We’re number one!

Earthquakes were never anything people in West Texas thought much about. Years would pass in between tremors that anybody felt. Even after the shale revolution arrived in force a decade ago and oil crews started drilling frantically in the region’s vast Permian Basin, there seemed to be no impact on the land.

But then, suddenly, in 2015, there were six earthquakes that topped 3.0 on the Richter scale. And then six again the next year. And then the numbers just exploded: 17 became 78 became 181. And in the first three months of 2022 alone, there were another 59, putting the year on pace to set a fresh record. Lower the threshold to include tiny tremors and the numbers run into the thousands.

All of which means that West Texas, the proud oil-drilling capital of America, is now also on the cusp of becoming the earthquake capital of America. Even California and Alaska, home to massive fault lines and a never-ending series of tremors, appear bound to be overtaken soon at the current pace of things.

There’s little doubt that there is a link between the drilling and the jump in seismic activity. Huge quantities of wastewater spew out of wells as the oil gushes out, and injecting that water back into the ground—the cheapest disposal option—puts stress on the Earth’s fault lines. Industry insiders even acknowledge as much.

That none of the quakes so far has been big enough to do much damage—just a cracked wall here and a loosened skylight there—is of little comfort to those who watched a similar pattern develop in the oil towns of neighboring Oklahoma a few years ago. What followed there was a gradual pickup in size that eventually gave the tremors enough force to start ripping walls off homes and buildings. Oklahoma only broke the cycle and steadied the ground after regulators forced drillers to slow the pace of water disposal in the area and haul some of it miles away.

This is one I drafted awhile back and hadn’t gotten around to before now. The article jumps from topic to topic, so it’s either quote too much of it or tell you to read the rest. There’s not a clear technological remediation to this – as noted, the solution in Oklahoma was to do less of the thing that was exacerbating the situation. Given that that means drilling less oil, at least for now, good luck with that. But at some point we’re going to have a quake that does real damage – as the story notes, in the last two years, there have been four tremors measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale in Oklahoma; Texas will surely follow along that path – and then we’ll be at that familiar place of trying to figure out why it all went wrong and who’s to blame for it. We know how it goes from there.

UT and OU swear they’re still in the Big XII until 2025

Jul 22nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Maybe they even believe that, though I remain doubtful.

Almost a year later, UT’s and OU’s bombshell decision to leave the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference is still being felt in the latest round of conference realignment.

After an hourlong panel discussion at the Texas High School Coaches Association Convention, [UT Athletic Director Chris] Del Conte and [OU Athletic Director Joe] Castiglione offered no hints on a timeline to exit the Big 12, except to say both schools are committed to remaining in the league until 2025.

“We realize we’ve made a decision and we’re focused on being a great member through the time we said we would,” Castiglione said. “There’s a lot of changing around us. If that facilitates a conversation that needs to take place about an earlier departure, then it does.

“But I said very consistently that, and I know my counterpart Chris Del Conte has said the same thing, as has our presidents, that we informed the Big 12 that we would leave after ’25, but we plan on fulfilling our obligations … And if they want to talk to us about something different then we’ll certainly listen.”

Del Conte offered a similar sentiment.

“We’re going to honor our commitments,” he said. “So, where we’re at, I think those things are all premature. I mean, we’re 45 days out from the start of the season. We’re really focused on the football season this year.”

Incoming Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said at the league’s kickoff event in Arlington last week that “anything is on the table” and that conversations with UT and OU would be forthcoming when he officially begins the job Aug. 1.

Both schools are projected to owe at least $80 million in exit fees if they leave before the expiration of the current media rights deal.

“Any situation like this, I always look for a win-win scenario,” Yormark said. “That being said, it’s important that whatever happens is in the best interest of this conference. But I look forward, at the right time, to have those conversations.”

So the temporarily supersized Big XII is still in play. That’s assuming that the non-UT and OU members aren’t plotting to scoop up some PAC 12 refugees, which may make it easier to wave goodbye to the leavers. I’m totally speculating here. I thought that UT and OU would find their way to the SEC before 2025 before that bombshell dropped – surely, they will very much want to jump the fence as soon as it’s feasible to do so – and I still think that. The mechanics of how they get there may change, but I believe the incentives remain.

For their part, the SEC continues to be coy.

Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey believes his league got the better deal with the coming additions of Texas and Oklahoma than the Big Ten with its coming additions of UCLA and Southern Cal, based on geography and history.

Sankey, in his opening remarks of the SEC Media Days on Monday, pointed out the UT and OU additions are in “contiguous states.” In other words, league travel only requires crossing a state line, not flying over mountains and deserts.

The Longhorns and Sooners are scheduled to join the SEC by July 2025 but perhaps even a year or two earlier.

“That’s not up to me, that’s about the relationships between Oklahoma and Texas and the Big 12,” Sankey said of when exactly UT and OU are expected to exit the Big 12 and join the SEC. “(Our) focus is on the additions being effective July 1, 2025.”

Again, maybe he believes that. Maybe it’s true, or at least true-ish. You know where I’ve placed my chips.

USC and UCLA to join Big Ten

Jul 2nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Wow.

USC and UCLA have been accepted as the newest members of the Big Ten conference with league officials approving their membership Thursday night. The programs have announced their respective departures from the Pac-12 beginning in 2024 with the pair marking a significant acquisition for the Big Ten that will significantly change the college sports landscape.

“Ultimately, the Big Ten is the best home for USC and Trojan athletics as we move into the new world of collegiate sports,” USC athletic director Mike Bohn said. “We are excited that our values align with the league’s member institutions. We also will benefit from the stability and strength of the conference; the athletic caliber of Big Ten institutions; the increased visibility, exposure, and resources the conference will bring our student-athletes and programs; and the ability to expand engagement with our passionate alumni nationwide.”

“After careful consideration and thoughtful deliberation, UCLA has decided to leave the Pac-12 Conference and join the Big Ten Conference at the start of the 2024–25 season,” said UCLA chancellor Gene D. Block and AD Martin Jarmond in a combined statement. “… Each school faces its own unique challenges and circumstances, and we believe this is the best move for UCLA at this time. For us, this move offers greater certainty in rapidly changing times and ensures that we remain a leader in college athletics for generations to come. As the oldest NCAA Division I athletic conference in the United States and with a footprint that will now extend from the Pacific to the Atlantic, Big Ten membership offers Bruins exciting new competitive opportunities and a broader national media platform for our student-athletes to compete and showcase their talents.”

Big Ten presidents and athletic directors first met Wednesday night to discuss adding USC and UCLA to the league, sources told CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander. A subsequent vote was held Thursday night to officially welcome the programs into the league beginning Aug. 2, 2024.

“As the national leader in academics and athletics for over 126 years, the Big Ten Conference has historically evaluated its membership with the collective goal to forward the academic and athletic mission for student-athletes under the umbrella of higher education,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said. “The unanimous vote today signifies the deep respect and welcoming culture our entire conference has for the University of Southern California, under the leadership of President Carol Folt, and the University of California, Los Angeles, under the leadership of Chancellor Gene Block.”

I did not see that one coming. The ACC and the Big XII had lost members to other conferences before, including the University of Colorado to the PAC12, but this is earth-shaking, at least on the scale of UT and Oklahoma jumping to the SEC. The PAC12 will now have to negotiate a new TV contract without its two flagship schools, who were motivated to seek greener pastures in the first place because the PAC12’s TV contract wasn’t all that lucrative.

History and tradition have long been dead as reasons for conferences to exist and stay together, but I would have thought geography might have been a limiting factor. Not so much now, as the Big Ten literally spans coast to coast, with members in such heartland states as California, Maryland, and New Jersey. At this point, I wonder when we’ll get to a place where the “conference” idea is wholly discarded in favor of divisions, like in the NFL. I also wonder what effect this will eventually have on non-football schools that have become national powers in basketball, like Gonzaga.

A bit of local perspective from the LA Times:

“This is the most volatile and uncertain era in the history of American collegiate athletics,” USC athletic director Mike Bohn said in a statement. “USC must ensure it is best positioned and prepared for whatever happens next, and it is our responsibility to always evaluate potential opportunities and be willing to make changes when needed. Ultimately, the Big Ten is the best home for USC and Trojan athletics as we move into the new world of collegiate sports.”

UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond told The Times, “College athletics is changing, and UCLA has always led in times of change. For the sake of our student-athletes, and for preserving the legacy of Bruin excellence, we cannot afford to stand still.”

This new, changing world Bohn and Jarmond referred to is one in which college athletes for the first time can earn money from the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL) — a right the NCAA and its member schools long denied to players in the name of the ideals of amateurism.

With so much unknown about where athlete compensation is headed beyond NIL, USC and UCLA leaders felt they had to address the long-term financial viability of their programs.

“As the oldest NCAA Division I athletic conference in the United States and with a footprint that will now extend from the Pacific to the Atlantic, Big Ten membership offers Bruins exciting new competitive opportunities and a broader national media platform for our student-athletes to compete and showcase their talents,” UCLA chancellor Gene Block and Jarmond said in a joint letter. “Specifically, this move will enhance name, image and likeness opportunities through greater exposure.”

[…]

In moving to the Big Ten, USC and UCLA also solve another issue that’s long plagued the Pac-12: Kickoff times. Both schools were often relegated to the late window on Saturday nights, neither often finishing before half the country was asleep.

“For our fans, Big Ten membership equates to better television time slots for our road games, but the same number of home games either at the Rose Bowl, in Pauley Pavilion or other UCLA venues,” Block and Jarmond wrote.

As members of the Big Ten, late kickoffs are almost assuredly a relic of the past. The most glaring problem for the Pac-12, however, has long been what happened after kickoff.

We spend a week or two each year on the west coast visiting family. That makes for some great sports-watching opportunities, because the games start as early as 9 AM and then go all day. If USC and UCLA fans don’t mind some early morning kickoffs and never having an evening home game going forward, then I guess this will work out fine for them. ESPN, Slate, and The Ringer have more.

UH will officially join the Big XII in 2023

Jun 11th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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No use waiting around.

The University of Houston will start play in the Big 12 in 2023 after the school came to an agreement on exit fees with the American Athletic Conference.

The Cougars will pay the AAC $18 million spread over 14 years to leave early and join the Power 5. The school will pay the first $10 million by 2024 with the rest to come in the following 12 years.

The Cougars, Cincinnati and Central Florida, are leaving the AAC and joining the Big 12 along with BYU, which as an indepentend already had announced plans to join in 2023.

The conference shift came after Texas and Oklahoma announced last summer they would leave the Big 12 and move to the SEC. Texas and Oklahoma still say they won’t move until 2025, so the Big 12 could have 14 teams for two seasons unless the schools negotiate an early departure.

The exit of the three schools from the AAC will also impact when Rice will leave Conference-USA to join the AAC along with UTSA, North Texas, Charlotte, Florida Atlantic and UAB.

UTSA announced its intent to join the AAC in 2023, while Rice said it hoped to release more information soon.

See here for some background. We noted this possibility in April. As for the exit fees, UH will be able to afford it.

While the Big XII may temporarily swell to 14 members in 2023 – which will make its name no less accurate than it is now, with ten members – I think there’s a strong chance that UT and OU will make their way to the SEC at the same time. UT is already scheduling games with Texas A&M, so really it’s all just paperwork and contract details at this point. By the same token, I’d expect Rice and its fellow C-USA refugees to be fully in the AAC in 2023. It was always the most likely scenario – every other conference reshuffling happened ahead of the originally announced timelines, because once that cat is out of the bag the incentives are very much in favor of moving things along. I’d expect the rest of those dominoes to fall in the coming weeks. CultureMap has more.

Get ready to start raking in the cash, UH

Jun 9th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Money, money, money.

As the athletic director at Texas, Chris Del Conte is the CEO of one of the richest college athletic departments in the nation. He also knows what it’s like to have to make every penny count.

At TCU, Del Conte oversaw the school’s transition from the Mountain West to the Big 12 in 2012. As a member of the Mountain West, part of the so-called Group of Five, TCU never received more than $2 million in annual payout. So, when the Horned Frogs joined the Power Five, a change of address to the high-rent district of college athletes, you can imagine the shock of a few extra zeroes in the bank statement.

And that was before TCU became a fully vested member in its fourth year in the Big 12.

“Not right away, but there was for sure,” Del Conte said of the impact of an increased revenue flow for the Fort Worth private school. “The economics changed completely. There’s a big jump.”

A similar increase in revenue awaits the University of Houston, which along with BYU, Cincinnati and Central Florida, could join the Big 12 as early as 2023.

Upon entry, UH won’t see anywhere close to the $42.6 million the Big 12 announced Friday on the final day of its spring meetings, but the not-yet-announced revenue distribution for the incoming schools will be a considerably more than the current setup in the American Athletic Conference.

UH received $8.52 million as part of its annual revenue payout from the AAC, according to tax documents for the 2020-21 fiscal year. That was the second-highest total among AAC schools behind Cincinnati ($9.44 million), according to the Orlando Sentinel. UH’s revenue payout was nearly double the $4.43 million in 2021 and $4.354 million in 2020.

Once UH joins the Big 12, it can expect a similar framework for revenue payouts as TCU and West Virginia, the last two teams to join the league in 2012. The two schools received staggered shares for three years, receiving 50 percent in Year 1, 67 percent in Year 2 and 84 percent in Year 3 before becoming fully vested in the fourth year.

[…]

What could the revenue payout look like for UH? Based on this year’s Big 12 payout of $42.6 million — much of that coming from TV revenue — and again the following two years, which would represent UH’s first in the league. That would translate into at least $20 million in Year 1 and at least $26 million in Year 2. After that is unknown as the Big 12’s TV deal with ESPN and Fox is set to expire in 2025, which coincides with Texas and Oklahoma leaving for the Southeastern Conference.

Last summer, Bowlsby told Texas lawmakers that the remaining eight schools could lose 50 percent, or about $14 million per year, in TV revenue upon Texas and Oklahoma’s departure.

So that’s more than double the revenue early on, with the possibility of a significant drop that would put them close to where they are now. That’s a lot hinging on that next TV contract. I suspect the Big XII will be fine – we’re unlikely to run low on demand for college football and basketball on the tube – but it does suggest a bit of caution before going all in on whatever expensive new toys are out there. Good luck figuring it out, y’all.

The national media discovers Skeet Jones

May 24th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

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Here’s NBC News with a nice, juicy story.

Lawmen came to remote Loving County, Texas, on Friday to arrest the county judge, a former sheriff’s deputy and two ranch hands on one of Texas’ oldest crimes — cattle theft.

Judge Skeet Jones, 71, the top elected official since 2007 in the least populated county in the continental United States, is facing three felony counts of livestock theft and one count of engaging in criminal activity, accused of gathering up and selling stray cattle, authorities said.

Jones, the scion of a powerful ranching family that settled in Loving County in the 1950s, was booked into Winkler County Jail on Friday and released on $20,000 bond, records show. He did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Authorities also arrested former Loving County deputy Leroy Medlin Jr., 35, on one count of engaging in criminal activity — a second-degree felony that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. Medlin did not return phone calls, but his wife sent an email that questioned the motives behind the arrests. “We are being targeted,” she wrote, “at full force.”

Officials with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, the lead agency on the case, offered few specifics about the alleged crime. Commissioned through the Texas Department of Public Safety, the association has “special rangers” — certified peace officers — who investigate livestock theft and other agriculture crimes.

Jeremy Fuchs, a spokesman for the association, said the yearlong investigation is ongoing and more charges are possible.

The idea that the judge — who is paid $133,294 annually — would get picked up for cattle rustling was just too much for Susan Hays, a Texas election lawyer who’s wrangled with the Joneses in the past.

“You can’t make this shit up,” she said. “It’s a pain in the ass to round up cattle and take them to market. And then to risk real trouble for it? It’s just asinine to me.”

See here for the background. As a reminder, Susan Hays is also the Democratic candidate for Ag Commissioner.

For decades, a handful of prominent families in Loving County have feuded bitterly for control of the local government, with the Joneses finally largely coming out ahead. Skeet Jones has served as the judge for more than 15 years. His sister is the county clerk. His cousin’s husband is the county attorney. His nephew is the constable.

But some recently elected county officials have been butting heads with the Joneses and their allies, making for colorful commissioner’s court meetings and a much-anticipated November election.

And blood is no longer holding the Jones family together.

“He’s had free reign for the entire time since he’s been the judge,” said Skeet Jones’ nephew, Constable Brandon Jones, who was elected in 2016. “That’s given him a sense of power and impunity that he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Even the feeling of self-righteousness. That he can do no wrong.”

When Skeet Jones was sworn in as judge in 2007, most of the caliche roads were rutted like washboards and residents still had to line up to get potable water dispensed from a community tank.

But he presided over a period of unprecedented growth, as fracking boomed in the Permian Basin, feeding money into the county’s coffers. The parched landscape is dotted with massive gas plants, water plants and salt water disposal systems. Many of the surviving working ranches have “frac pads” for horizontally drilled wells that cut through the caliche and bedrock to free up the lifeblood for Loving County’s economy: oil and gas.

The tax base hovers around $7 billion to $9 billion. And the county’s budget has grown from about $2 million in 2008 to more than $28 million.

The salaries for many of the top officials in town — the judge, auditor, treasurer, clerk, justice of the peace, county attorney, constable and sheriff — are $100,000 or higher.

To give you some idea of how insane a budget of $28 million for a county with 57 people in it, that’s about $491,000 per person. The fiscal year 2022 budget for Harris County had an estimated general fund of $2 billion, for 4.8 million people, or $415 per person. That’s less than 0.1% of the per capita allocations for Loving. If Harris had the same resources as Loving, it would have over $2.3 trillion in its general revenue fund; in other words, in the ballpark of what the US as a whole spends in a non-COVID year. As for the family dynamics and the concentration of power like that, well, I suspect we’re just beginning to delve into the plot.

One more thing:

Medlin previously worked as a detective for the San Antonio Police Department, where records show he was issued indefinite suspensions — the department’s equivalent of being fired — three times.

In 2015, he was placed on indefinite suspension for a 100-plus mph pursuit of a driver who had a toddler in the back seat, records show. Medlin was reinstated after an appeal.

Then in 2018, Medlin engaged in another high-speed pursuit after telling dispatchers the driver “almost ran me over,” records show. But body and dash camera footage contradicted Medlin’s account, according to internal affairs reports. He appealed again, telling supervisors he felt threatened, even if it wasn’t evident from the videos.

He was later issued another indefinite suspension after supervisors determined he issued tickets for violations he didn’t witness, records show.

Medlin joined the Loving County Sheriff’s Office in January 2019 and “separated” from the agency less than two years later, records show. (Sheriff Chris Busse declined to say why.)

Medlin also worked on Jones’ ranch before being hired by Loving County as a janitor and groundskeeper.

Forget the Yellowstone-meets-Game of Thrones as directed by early-career Coen Brothers aspect of this, it’s Leroy Medlin that’s the tale as old as time here. The inability of law enforcement agencies to fire corrupt and/or inept cops, combined with said cops’ ability to easily hire on with some other law enforcement agency in the state (there are nearly 2,000 law enforcement agencies in the state of Texas, including as we now know the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, which was responsible for this particular bust) makes for a plethora of opportunities. I feel very confident there’s more to the story of why Leroy Medlin did not stay with the Loving County Sheriff’s Office longer than he did than what we now know.

The AP had a much shorter story on this, which the Chron picked up. I’m sure other outlets, including the Texas papers, will join in, and I can’t wait. Hell, I can’t wait for the eight-part true crime podcast and hopefully HBO miniseries on the life and times of the Jones family of Loving County. Susan Hays is right, you cannot make this stuff up. But you sure can ride it to the end when it happens anyway.

The coming fight over medical abortion

May 23rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Sure is a good thing SCOTUS will leave this up to the states, isn’t it?

Republican-led states are moving swiftly to restrict access to medication abortion.

The efforts so far have focused on regulations around the pills, such as banning them from being shipped or prescribed. But can states ban the actual abortion pill itself, even though the Food and Drug Administration has approved it? That question could be the next frontier in the abortion wars.

The short answer comes down to this: The issue isn’t settled law and will likely be litigated in the courts. Some argue states may be hard-pressed to ban the federally approved medication, though antiabortion advocates disagree.

[…]

Some states have introduced bills focused on banning abortion pills, but they haven’t gotten a lot of traction, per Elizabeth Nash, an interim associate director at Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. (A recent exception is Oklahoma, whose Republican governor is poised to sign legislation banning abortions – including medication abortions – from the moment of “fertilization.”)

Rather, states are banning the practice of medicine around the pills. For instance: At least 19 states ban the use of telehealth for medication abortion, and some states have additional restrictions, like prohibiting pills from being mailed.

Yet, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, some states may try to ban the actual medication. And states already have gestational limits and other abortion bans on the books that could kick in quickly if Roe is overturned — and those likely encompass limitations on the pills, experts said.

Can states ban a medication the FDA has signed off on?

There’s no clear precedent here.

Some states may argue they can ban medication abortion because states have the authority to regulate the practice of medicine. The FDA, on the other hand, is the acknowledged authority on medical products, such as the abortion pill. But the line between medical practice and medical products is not always clear.

And if a state squared off against the federal government over an FDA-approved drug … “We don’t know how the court would rule. It’s an open question,” Patti Zettler, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University and former associate chief counsel in the FDA’s Office of the Chief Counsel.

See here for some background. Reminder #1: The state of Texas has made it a felony to provide abortion medication after seven weeks, after having already banned anyone but doctors from dispensing such medication, and only via an in-person office visit – no telemedicine. You can be sure that Texas will take this to the next level in the next legislative session if it is in position to do so.

Reminder #2: The same medicine that is used for abortion is also used to treat miscarriages. Needless to say, women who are suffering through a miscarriage will face – and as that story notes, are already facing – barriers to medical care that could threaten their health, their future ability to get pregnant and carry a child to term, and even their lives. That’s our future, and if you think I’m being alarmist, go back and read all those soothing articles about how this Supreme Court was never ever going to overturn Roe v Wade because it would cause too much upheaval.

The cattle-rustling County Judge

May 22nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

“Bonkers” is the first word that came to mind as I read this Twitter thread and the linked story at the end of it:

.
#BREAKING: Loving County Judge Skeet Jones was arrested earlier today by the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.

He and three others are accused of picking up loose cattle and selling them.

Special rangers have been on this case for more than a year.

— Tatum Guinn (@tatumguinn) 5:55 PM – 20 May 2022

.
This isn’t my first time reporting on Judge Jones.

In 2014, I did a story about how he was helping CDL drivers.

He was taking speeding tickets and turning them into illegal parking tickets. The driver would pay a higher fine and keep a clean driving record. You can’t do that.

— Tatum Guinn (@tatumguinn) 9:50 PM – 20 May 2022

.
Other changed charges include possession of marijuana, illegal dumping and driving with an invalid license — all changed to an illegal parking ticket.

— Tatum Guinn (@tatumguinn) 10:28 PM – 20 May 2022

Read the rest of the thread and the story at the end for more. Remember that this is the County Judge at the top of this alleged crime ring – imagine if say, Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough had been busted for running a gang of car thieves. A few other points to note:

– This was not Judge Skeet Jones’ first brush with the law, as noted. In 2016, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct issued a public warning and order of additional education for his role in quashing speeding tickets for truck drivers (note that “CDL” = “commercial drivers license”, so this was for people who drive, usually big rig trucks, for a living). In a sane world, it should have been a political-career-ending scandal, but somehow there he was still in office eight years later stealing cows.

County Judge is normally an executive position, but constitutionally they do have some bench-judge authority, which most County Judges are too busy to do even if they had any interest in it. And also, since I’m sure you’re wondering, the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association does indeed have law enforcement authority, which apparently includes a crossover with Oklahoma. The things I learn doing this blog, I swear. Anyway, this is my nominee for most amazing story of the year, and I don’t even want to think about what could knock it off that perch. Many thanks to my friend Ginger for pointing this out to me.

No collegiate gymnastics in Texas

May 1st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I did not know this.

Ragan Smith did not lack options when it came to choosing a college, as tends to happen when you’re an elite gymnast with a national title on your resume.

One option was unavailable to Smith. It doesn’t exist.

Texas, the site of this week’s NCAA women’s gymnastics championships, the state that’s produced Olympic champions Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin and Simone Biles, the state that has over 20 colleges and universities currently classified as Division I, the state that features some of the most prominent gymnastics programs in the country if not the world, has exactly six women’s gymnastics scholarships available, all of them at Division II Texas Woman’s University.

That meant that Smith, who moved from Georgia to the Dallas suburbs as a 13-year-old to train at the gym owned by former world champion and Olympic bronze medalist Kim Zmeskal, had to leave Texas to compete at the Division I level.

“All these great clubs are in Texas, and you would think (the big schools) would have a program,” Smith said. “But they really don’t.”

Things worked out just fine for Smith, now a junior at Oklahoma. She and the Sooners will aim for their fourth national title in eight years on Saturday when they take on Florida, Auburn and Utah at Dickie’s Arena, the opulent facility located less than three miles from the TCU campus.

The Horned Frogs offer 13 varsity women’s sports, including equestrian, rifle and triathlon. Just not gymnastics.

It’s the same at Texas (which offers rowing, among others), Baylor (which has acrobatics and tumbling, a cousin of artistic gymnastics), Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Houston and Rice and all the rest. Contacted this week by The Associated Press, representatives at Texas and Texas A&M both indicated there are no plans to offer women’s gymnastics as a varsity sport.

[…]

There are 12 full scholarships available at Division I women’s gymnastics programs, with a move being made to potentially expand the number to 14. Throw in training, travel, coaching salaries and everything else, and it’s not cheap to launch a competitive team. Add in the ripple effects of Title IX — which requires “ athletic interests and abilities of male and female students must be equally and effectively accommodated ” — and the math can be tricky.

Still, there is hope in some places that women’s gymnastics can be “revenue neutral.” It’s a model LSU coach Jay Clark hopes his program can reach by the end of the decade, though the Tigers may be the exception. LSU is typically among the national leaders in average attendance and drew an average of 11,691 fans to their five home meets this season, tops in the country.

While adding scholarships could be a hurdle for potential programs to navigate, Clark sees it as a supply and demand issue.

“We haven’t had an increase since 1995 and the pool of talent has grown four-fold,” he said.

He’s not joking. Within the last decade the number of active Level 10 gymnasts — which comprises the vast majority of college athletes — has nearly doubled from 1,600 to nearly 3,100.

As you can see, OU’s gymnastics team went on to win that national championship, so indeed all worked out well for Ragan Smith. I confess, I had just assumed that schools like UT and A&M would have had women’s gymnastics programs, because why wouldn’t they? Sure, a gymnastics program might cost a few bucks, but have you seen what schools like these pay their football and (mostly men’s but increasingly now women’s) basketball coaches? If there’s one thing I expect these big schools at the Power Five conferences to be able to do, it’s extract enough money from TV networks, advertisers, and fat-cat boosters to cover whatever expenses they have and then some. Obviously, there hasn’t been the demand for that largesse to include these programs as yet. Given how popular gymnastics is overall, and how many alumni must have had daughters that competed in gymnastics as kids, I’m a little amazed by that.

Big XII may get temporarily bigger

Apr 30th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

The dominoes fall when they fall.

Next week, the Big 12 plans to discuss the future of the conference regarding its expansion, per Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger.

Houston, Cincinnati and UCF are expected to join the Big 12 in the 2023–24 academic year, potentially joining the conference before Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC by the ’25 academic year.

Per The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach, the American Athletic Conference still has to sign off on the three schools exit. The process so far has been amicable.

“No agreement has been reached to permit the three (UCF, Houston, Cincinnati) to leave early,” AAC commissioner Mike Aresco told Auerbach. “Our negotiations are continuing.”

Though their joining was already expected, the negotiations are expected to be finalized in the next week, according to Dellenger. BYU will also be joining the Big 12 in all sports, not just football.

There is a possibility that there will be 14 teams in the Big 12 during the 2023 and ’24 seasons. Conference officials will be meeting next week to discuss how a larger team pool could work, examining all possibilities including divisions and whether there should be eight or nine league games.

See here and here for some background. An early exit from the AAC by UH, UCF, and Cincinnati might hasten the arrival of its new members as well. Thing might be slightly less complicated if UT and OU are able to officially join the SEC in time for the 2023 season – which I have always thought would happen – but that’s a different domino. I feel like now that this one is in motion, the rest may follow, but we’ll see.

More on Lizelle Herrera

Apr 13th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Listen to the advocates. They’re seeing this clearly.

A 26-year-old woman was arrested and jailed in South Texas last week over a self-induced abortion just months after the state banned most abortions and weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court could roll back 50 years of federal abortion protections.

The timing of the now-dropped murder charge amid such seismic policy shifts could be pure coincidence. But on Monday, legal scholars and abortion rights advocates said the implications of Lizelle Herrera’s ordeal could not be more timely.

“Ms. Herrera’s case is a terrific example of exactly what we expect to happen,” said Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a group that has defended women in abortion-related criminal cases. “You can’t continue to say over and over again that abortion is murder and not expect that police and prosecutors are going to not treat it as murder.”

[…]

But abortion researchers warn that as Texas and other states further restrict abortion access, more and more pregnant women will be driven to seek out the procedure themselves, leading to potential criminal investigations. In the past, abortion-related criminal cases have disproportionately affected women of color and poor women.

“When you don’t have anybody else to punish, do you just punish no one and let the abortion happen? Or do you punish the woman?” asked Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University who has studied the anti-abortion movement. “I don’t know what the state’s going to do with that, but that’s going to be the scenario sometimes. And I think this is sort of a harbinger of that debate to come.”

See here for the background. The anti-abortion zealots that forced SB8 on us insist that they don’t want women who seek abortions to be punished, but there’s no reason to trust them. There are Republican candidates who would very much like to punish women for getting an abortion. There’s no reason to believe that won’t become the mainstream Republican position, because the Republican mainstream has gotten more and more extreme over time. Allowing rape and incest exceptions for abortion used to be Republican mainstream, and now it’s not. This goes in one direction, and we can see that from here. Listen to what the advocates are saying. They’ve been right all along.

Oklahoma preps to ban abortion

Mar 26th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

This was just a matter of time.

Oklahoma’s state House on Tuesday voted 78-19 to pass a near complete ban on abortions, legislation that far surpasses Texas’ six-week ban. The bill is now headed to the Senate and, if passed, will be the strictest anti-abortion bill in the country.

The legislation — known as House Bill 4327 — bars a physician from performing or inducing an abortion at any point in the pregnancy unless it is “to save the life” of the pregnant person. Similar to Texas’ six-week abortion ban, the new legislation would allow private citizens to pursue civil actions of up to $10,000 against anyone who performs or “aids and abets in the provision of such an abortion.” An “emergency clause” adopted means that, if the bill is signed into law, it would take effect immediately.

“Abortion rights activists have been warning of this nightmare for months: These bounty hunter laws will have a domino effect across the country, as more and more states ban abortion entirely while Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land,” Elisabeth Smith, director of state policy and advocacy for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.

[…]

Oklahoma’s lawmakers relied heavily on Texas as an example for their bill, with the Republican sponsor of HB 4327, Rep. Wendi Stearman, repeatedly citing the leading role that Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general, played in drafting Oklahoma’s legislation.

Abortion restrictions in states like Oklahoma, which has become a critical access point, would cause a ripple effect across the region. Oklahoma was one of several surrounding states that reported a massive influx of people crossing state lines after Texas’ law went into effect last September.

According to Planned Parenthood data collected between September and December, health centers in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado and Missouri saw a nearly 800 percent increase in abortion patients from Texas when compared to the same period one year prior. Some providers in Oklahoma have even reported a 2,500-percent increase in the last six months, and more than half of the total number of abortion patients had a Texas ZIP code.

Lots of people had been travelling to Oklahoma from Texas for abortion care, but it was obvious that was not going to last for long. We’ll have to see if this has the effect of reducing the number of abortions, or if it causes an equivalent increase in demand for abortion pills. Oh, and while I doubt anyone from Texas or anywhere else had been going to Idaho for an abortion, they just passed their version of SB8. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. Daily Kos has more.

And more people are travelling for abortions

Mar 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

The number of abortions performed in Texas has declined greatly since the passage of SB8. But the number of Texans seeking abortions has remained the same, which is what abortion advocates have always said would be the case.

The number of women leaving Texas to obtain abortions has grown tenfold since lawmakers here banned the procedure after early pregnancy, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin.

The findings, coupled with a huge uptick in online orders for abortion pills, suggest that the state’s widespread crackdown has not yet led to a large decline in procedures. While abortions at Texas clinics did fall by about half after the new restrictions took effect in September, many women still sought out to end their unwanted pregnancies through other, often more challenging paths.

The law “has not reduced the need for abortion care in Texas. Rather it has reduced in-state access,” said Dr. Kari White, lead investigator at the university’s Texas Policy Evaluation Project.

More than 5,500 Texans traveled to abortion clinics in six surrounding states between September and December of last year, according to the study. That’s nearly 1,400 trips per month, up from about 130 per month in the same period in 2019. The latest tally is likely an undercount, since some clinics did not participate and the study did not include trips to states farther from Texas.

[…]

Abortion rights advocates are already preparing for states to cut access in more than two dozen states across the South and Midwest, and providers are rushing to build out clinic space in northern and coastal states more friendly to abortion rights.

The new findings from Texas may be an early picture of the scramble to come for women in other states. The vast majority of trips out of Texas were to Oklahoma and New Mexico, where clinics are on average several hundred miles from most Texans. Oklahoma has its own “trigger” abortion ban in place if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision protecting the right to abortion until about 23 weeks of pregnancy.

Women interviewed in the study said they faced heavy obstacles in seeking out abortions since the law took effect, including delays at clinics in and out of Texas. One in four said they had visited crisis pregnancy centers, which often discourage women from getting abortions. Researchers interviewed 65 women in total.

See here for the TexPEP news release, and here for the full report. You can consider this a bookend to the other recent report about the increase in demand for abortion-inducing medication. It may seem like a bit of comfort that there are still options available, but one is much more time consuming and expensive, not to mention about to get more so as states like Oklahoma and Louisiana follow in Texas’ cursed footsteps, and the other is also heavily restricted under state law, with the great likelihood of further restrictions coming in future legislative sessions if Republicans remain in control. It’s just a matter of time before the emphasis changes from “ways to make abortion more illegal” to “ways to increase enforcement of anti-abortion laws and increase the penalties for violating them”. Do not think for a minute that locking up people who seek abortions, and the people who help them, is off the table. I guarantee you, it is not.

In the “I hate it when I’m right” department, later the same day that I wrote this, I saw this on Twitter:

.
NEW

A new Missouri bill would prohibit women leaving the state to get an abortion.

If this style of legislation is somehow found legal, it would have a huge impact in a post-Roe v Wade world.

— Kate Smith (@byKateSmith) 3:00 PM – 8 March 2022

Don’t ask how that could be legal, or how it could possibly be enforced. The terror of it is the point. Scare people into thinking they can be locked up for seeking a legal abortion elsewhere, and you’re done.

And on that cheery note, we have this update about the largely futile efforts so far to stop this travesty in the courts.

In its 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court created a constitutional protection for abortion through viability, the point at which a fetus could likely survive outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks.

Since then, states, including Texas, have been stopped by the federal courts when they’ve tried to ban abortions before that point in pregnancy.

But Texas’ law has so far managed to evade a similar fate. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop the law from going into effect before Sept. 1, instead allowing lawyers for the abortion providers to bring a pre-enforcement challenge, which was heard in November.

The U.S. Department of Justice also tried to challenge the law, and succeeded in getting it temporarily enjoined by a federal district judge. That ruling was swiftly overturned by a higher court and the U.S. Supreme Court eventually threw out the DOJ’s challenge.

In December, the Supreme Court also threw out the vast majority of the abortion providers’ legal challenge, allowing only one narrow aspect to proceed. That remaining challenge is slowly wending its way through the courts, but even if it is granted, it would not allow abortion providers to resume providing the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.

Marc Hearron, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the abortion providers, said Thursday that their challenge in federal court “no longer stands a chance” of stopping these lawsuits from being filed.

“The Supreme Court greenlit this law’s unprecedented vigilante scheme and essentially said that federal courts are powerless to stop it,” he said. “There is no end in sight to this nightmare.”

Abortion providers have had more luck in Texas courts, where state District Judge David Peeples ruled in December that the law is unconstitutional. His judgment did not block lawsuits from being filed under the law, and is currently being appealed.

[…]

Immediately after Texas’ latest abortion restrictions went into effect Sept. 1, one San Antonio doctor, Alan Braid, announced in a Washington Post op-ed that he had provided an abortion after cardiac activity was detected.

“I fully understood that there could be legal consequences,” Braid wrote, “but I wanted to make sure that Texas didn’t get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested.”

Three people sued Braid, including two disbarred attorneys who indicated they were more interested in seeing the law tested and getting the money than actually taking a stand against abortion.

Hearron, who is also representing Braid, said Thursday that they have filed a countersuit in federal court against the three claimants, seeking to have the law declared unconstitutional and the suits thrown out.

Beyond those initial three claims, no lawsuits have been brought against anyone for aiding or abetting in a prohibited abortion. But just last week, a group of anti-abortion lawyers asked a judge to allow them to depose the leaders of two abortion funding nonprofits to gather information for potential lawsuits.

So things are bad, and there’s no clear path to them being less bad. If you want something to happen at the federal level, we’re going to need to add at least two more Democratic Senators, which might give us enough to make changes to the filibuster, and we need to hold onto the House as well. If not, well, as the story says, there’s no end in sight.

Oklahoma’s experience with medical marijuana

Mar 4th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

A good read.

Inside an old metal building off a quiet stretch of U.S. 77, Josh Blevins walked among rows of fragrant marijuana plants basking below carefully calibrated light. Blevins, a former construction engineer from Texas, bought this former scrap yard just north of the farming town of Lexington, population 2,200, after a statewide ballot initiative legalized medical marijuana about four years ago.

Since then, dispensaries have become as ubiquitous as gas stations and churches in much of Oklahoma, where state officials have licensed more than 12,000 marijuana-related businesses and about 1 in 10 people now own medical marijuana cards.

Blevins, 36, has capitalized on the boom, building another 10,000-square-foot warehouse and brand new office space just down the road from the former scrap yard. Like many commercial growers, he created his own supply chain from seed to sale, stocking the shelves of his two dispensaries — both named Twister Roo — in Moore and Noble. It has proven to be both profitable and a learning opportunity, Blevins said, as he eyes expansion to other states with upcoming marijuana ballot initiatives.

“What we’re doing here is kind of building the picture that we want to duplicate in other states,” Blevins said. “Just copy and paste.”

But while Oklahoma has become a kind of nirvana for growers and producers, who enjoy a relatively low startup cost in comparison to other states, it has some lawmakers leery because of lax regulation. Officials with the overwhelmed Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority said they’ve been able to inspect only a quarter of licensed marijuana businesses so far.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, said during his State of the State address on Tuesday that voters were misled by the language on the 2018 ballot initiative and it has “tied our hands as we regulate the industry.”

“This is causing major problems in our communities,” he added, “and we must get it under control.”

Stitt said the relatively low cost of getting a business license and the lack of a cap on the number of growers has fueled a black market in Oklahoma that may require legislation to reform.

“While we can’t change the past, we can learn from it and improve our future,” Stitt said. “We’re getting the right leaders in place and untying their hands to enforce the laws.”

[…]

The state presented a rare opportunity for legalization in 2018, when medical marijuana backers garnered enough signatures to put one of the most accessible medical marijuana initiatives in the country on the ballot, bypassing the conservative Legislature. The result: It costs $2,500 to apply for a business, cultivation or transportation license in Oklahoma — compared to $100,000 or more in neighboring Arkansas.

“This is a system that is set up to basically create opportunities for small businesses,” said Morgan Fox, the political director of NORML, a national cannabis advocacy organization. “There’s a lot of room for people to start up businesses without a tremendous amount of capital.”

Lured by the state’s low fees and relative lack of regulation, Paulie Wood, a former California grower and the CEO of Kannabiz Monkeeyz, said he decided to close his West Coast operations about two years ago because of the “insane overtaxation” hampering his business.

In California, he paid more than $100,000 a year in state and local taxes to operate two cultivation sites even after one outdoor crop was destroyed by smoke and ash following the Oak Fire in Mendocino County in September 2020. He pays a fraction of that cost in Oklahoma.

“In Oklahoma you can literally start a grow for under $10,000, where in California you’re going to be out hundreds of thousands of dollars to just get started,” Wood said. “They call it the wild, wild west of cannabis in a good way. As a whole, it’s the nicest, friendliest state we could ever want to be in.”

Oklahoma is also friendly toward people trying to get medical marijuana cards, which cost only $120 for the application fee, plus a doctor’s visit. While some states have very specific and restrictive lists of conditions that qualify for a card, such as AIDS and cancer, Oklahoma’s list is relatively expansive and includes less severe medical issues, including anxiety, insomnia and muscle spasms.

But now, a battle is brewing in Oklahoma between advocates who want to expand the industry and opponents who are trying to rein it in. In the legislative session starting next month, state lawmakers hope to play catch-up and introduce new restrictions on growers and processors amid renewed efforts by groups hoping to pass another ballot initiative, this time for full legalization.

Oklahoma’s growing medical marijuana market has been lucrative for the state, generating nearly $150 million in revenue in 2021, up from nearly $128 million in 2020, according to state data.

The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, which has almost doubled its staff in the past year, is still struggling to get inspectors to all of the licensees, said Adria Berry, the agency’s executive director. “We have not been able to keep up with the demand, but we are getting to the place where we’re able to get many more people out inspecting those places on a day-to-day basis.”

The Oklahoma law says medical card holders must be in-state residents, but Blevins and other growers said much of the demand for their product is coming from out of state, in places like Texas — where possession of marijuana largely remains illegal — and Kansas, another deeply conservative state that is in line to legalize medical marijuana. That high demand has driven down prices, Blevins said, to about a third of what they were when he started in 2018.

“Now they’re so much cheaper than the black market, and they can be bought and sold for profit,” he said.

A few thoughts…

1. The fact that the medical marijuana regime approved by Oklahoma’s voters is extremely appealing to both growers and users because of low costs and lax regulation, and also kind of a nightmare for the state government because of those lax regulations, is probably the most Oklahoma thing about this.

2. That $150 million in revenue generated for the state by the new marijuana industry may sound like a lot, but it would represent less than 0.1% of Texas’ annual revenue, which is to say a rounding error. Texas’ economy is a lot larger than Oklahoma’s, but even then that $150 million would represent about 1% of that state’s annual revenue. (Here’s a more recent number, which isn’t much different.) Adding legal pot to the economy may do a lot of beneficial things, but it’s not going to help fund the state government in any substantial way.

3. Along those lines, this is a reminder that Oklahoma also has casinos. Which also would not generate much revenue for the state of Texas if we had them, though legalizing them here would shift some funds that currently go out of state back to here. You can support or oppose casinos and marijuana as you see fit – I’m strongly for marijuana legalization, and at best ambivalent about casinos – the economic arguments just aren’t that compelling.

4. The article contains the standard bit of optimism about the future potential for expanding access to marijuana in Texas, citing public opinion polls and some recent mumblings by Greg Abbott that are sort of vaguely in favor of something. It therefore makes the classic error of completely ignoring (or being unaware of) Dan Patrick’s implacable opposition to loosening marijuana laws, which renders those two items useless. When Dan Patrick is no longer Lt. Governor, we can talk about how expanded access to marijuana might play out. Until then, it’s a dead letter.

That’s all I got. Link via the Current.

American Athletic Conference to expand

Oct 21st, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Time for some more dominoes to fall.

The American Athletic Conference is set to consider expansion this week after six Conference USA programs applied for membership on Wednesday. If all six teams are added to the AAC, it would expand to become a 14-team league once realignment shakes out.

The six potential institutions looking to join the American from Conference USA include FAU, Charlotte, North Texas, UTSA, Rice and UAB, sources told CBS Sports on Monday. It’s expected that all six programs will be approved as new AAC members. Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel first reported the movement.

Adding North Texas, UTSA and Rice would allow the AAC to retain a strong geographical foothold in Texas, while FAU would join South Florida in the conference, Charlotte and UAB would have regional partners in East Carolina and Memphis, respectively.

The potential moves comes months after AAC members Cincinnati, Houston and UCF opted to depart for the Big 12, leaving the league with just eight football-playing members. The AAC previously looked to the West by courting Mountain West institutions Boise State, San Diego State, Air Force and Colorado State. However, all four schools declined the possibility of moving conferences.

“We do want to get back to either 10 or 12 [schools],” AAC commissioner Mike Aresco told the Orlando Sentinel in September. “We have some good candidates and we’re only dealing with candidates who have approached us — who have expressed an interest in us. It’s proceeding and I’m reasonably confident we’re going to end up as a strong conference and our goal is to be even stronger than before.”

The AAC is banking on safety in numbers. At 14 teams with many important geographic footprints under its belt, the American would stand with the Mountain West as the two strongest non-Power Five conferences. The move would also gouge Conference USA, which may now seek teams from the Sun Belt or a partnership with that conference after itself being reduced to eight members.

This round of realignment would leave Conference USA with just eight remaining members, which is one reason why it recently sought but failed to convince the AAC and Sun Belt to regroup along geographical lines. It is believed that there will remain 10 FBS conferences following this round of realignment.

[…]

The group puts an emphasis on big markets, featuring teams in Houston, San Antonio, Birmingham, Charlotte and on the edge of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Other schools that will compete in the hypothetical AAC include SMU, Memphis, East Carolina, Temple, Tulsa, South Florida, Navy and Tulane.

It’s not clear what a 14-team AAC would be worth in media rights revenue. Conference USA schools get about $500,000 annually in their current TV deal. The AAC, as it currently exists, averages $7 million per team. That figure is expected to decline significantly after the loss of three schools to the Big 12.

Something like this was highly likely after UH and others left for the Big XII. As the story notes, it could have been the Mountain West adding members, but they decided it was better financially to stand pat. The AAC isn’t as strong as it was before the departures, but some of these schools look like up-and-comers, in particular UTSA, a large public school with a big city market all to itself in college sports. It’s a great move for Rice, which has had far more success in women’s sports in recent years (the women’s basketball, volleyball, and soccer teams all went to the NCAA tournament last year) than the men’s, but the step up in competition is a double-edged sword, to say the least.

The timing of this all hinges on when UT and Oklahoma make their actual move to the SEC, as everything else will follow that. I continue to believe that UT and OU will suit up for the SEC no later than the spring of 2023, and it won’t surprise me at all if they’re there for football in 2022. I guarantee, there’s plenty of talk going on about that right now. ESPN and the Chron have more.

For now, some Texas women can travel to other states for abortions

Oct 11th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

For now.

Right there with them

The new Texas abortion ban has spurred a flood of women traveling sometimes hundreds of miles to access the procedure in neighboring states.

The law, which prohibits abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and calls for lets private citizens to enforce it by filing lawsuits, has been in effect for just over a month. But already, clinics in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado and New Mexico have said they’re being inundated with Texas patients.

“We haven’t seen numbers like this ever,” Dr. Rebecca Cohen, a Denver OB/GYN, told CBS News last month.

“An abortion can be painful, people can hurt,” Cohen said of the emotional toll. “But this is different. We are seeing patients who are traumatized when they arrive.”

In Louisiana, officials at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport said they went from seeing no more than 20 percent of their patients from Texas to now over 50 percent. Some patients are driving from as far as McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley.

[…]

The Guttmacher Institute, which supports for abortion rights, estimates that Texans are now traveling an average of 14 times farther to get the procedure. In states such as Louisiana, they then have to go through mandatory waiting periods.

The law is likely to disproportionately impact women of color, many of whom lack the time and money needed to get out of state.

In affidavits last month, abortion providers said Texas patients were undergoing traumatic and sometimes daunting trips to neighboring states. One child who was allegedly raped by a relative traveled with her guardian from Galveston to Oklahoma to get an abortion, and another woman was reportedly selling some of her belongings to pay for the trip to an out-of-state abortion clinic, according to the filings, which are part of a pending federal lawsuit over the law.

I guess it’s a minor consolation that some people are still able to exercise their constitutional right, but not everyone can, and those who are able to are now massively inconvenienced and having to pay a lot more money for the privilege. States like Louisiana and Oklahoma have their own abortion restrictions, like waiting periods, so even those who can travel to get the care they need and deserve have to make an ordeal of it. And of course, all this is available only until Oklahoma and Louisiana pass their own version of SB8, which they are apparently free to do now. As writers like Dahlia Lithwick have observed, SCOTUS does not need to write the words “Roe v Wade is overturned” in an opinion in order to overturn Roe v Wade. It’s already happened here, and we’re just the beginning. We need to be voting a lot of people out of office for this if we ever want to get our rights back.

Feds officially investigating Texas mask mandate ban

Sep 22nd, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Good.

The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday launched a civil rights investigation into Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates in schools, making Texas the sixth state to face a federal inquiry over mask rules.

The investigation will focus on whether Abbott’s order prevents students with disabilities who are at heightened risk for severe illness from COVID-19 from safely returning to in-person education, in violation of federal law, Suzanne B. Goldberg, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights wrote in a letter to Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath.

The investigation comes after the Texas Education Agency released guidance saying public school systems cannot require students or staff to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in light of Abbott’s ban on mask mandates.

[…]

Goldberg wrote that the Office for Civil Rights will examine whether TEA “may be preventing school districts in the state from considering or meeting the individual educational needs of students with disabilities or otherwise enabling discrimination based on disability.”

The department previously opened similar investigations into mask policies in Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, Oklahoma and Tennessee. But the agency had not done so in Texas because of court orders preventing the state from enforcing Abbott’s order. The new TEA guidance changed that, however.

See here and here for the background. The TEA’s new directive made me scratch my head.

In newly released guidance, the Texas Education Agency says public school systems cannot require students or staff to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

A statement released by the agency Friday says Gov. Greg Abbott’s May executive order banning mask mandates precludes districts from requiring face coverings.

“Per GA-38, school systems cannot require students or staff to wear a mask. GA-38 addresses government-mandated face coverings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement reads. “Other authority to require protective equipment, including masks, in an employment setting is not necessarily affected by GA-38.”

The agency previously had said it would not enforce the governor’s ban until the issue was resolved in the courts.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued several school districts for imposing mask requirements on students and teachers, and some districts have sued the state over the governor’s order. The lawsuits have produced mixed results with some courts upholding districts’ mask mandates and some siding with the attorney general.

TEA officials on Tuesday did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new guidelines and questions about how the agency would enforce the ban on mask mandates. The agency has not yet clarified what prompted the new guidelines, given that the legal battles regarding the order are ongoing.

Hard to know exactly what motivated this, but “pressure from Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton” would be high on my list of suspects. If I were to advise school districts that currently have mask mandates, as HISD does, or are thinking about imposing one, I would say go right ahead, and keep the mandates you have. This is a toothless threat, and the courts have not yet weighed in on the issue in a meaningful way. We know that having the mask mandates promotes safety, and if that isn’t the highest priority I don’t know what is. Do not waver.

Anyway. The Trib has an explainer about the state of mask mandates and lawsuits around them, but it doesn’t indicate when the legal cases may be having hearings, which admittedly would be a big task to track. The federal lawsuit will have a hearing on October 6, and we may get some clarity out of that. In the meantime, keep the mask mandates. We need them, and (a couple of district court judges aside) no one is stopping school districts from having them. The Trib has more.

UH officially joins the Big XII

Sep 11th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Long time coming.

Hello, Big 12.

In a historic day, the University of Houston has accepted an invitation to join the Big 12 Conference.

The Big 12’s presidents voted unanimously Friday to formally invite Houston, BYU, Cincinnati and Central Florida to form a 14-team league.

UH will begin play in the Big 12 as early as fall 2023.

“Joining the Big 12 Conference is a historic step in our institutional journey and signifies the tremendous growth and success attained academically and athletically over the last decade,” UH chancellor Renu Khator said in a statement. “Our expectations for our University remain high, our aspirations continue to be bold, and we embrace this new opportunity to compete at the highest levels in all we do.”

[…]

As members of the American Athletic Conference, Houston, Cincinnati and UCF must give 27 months’ notice if they plan to leave the league and pay a $10 million exit fee.

BYU is an independent in football and could join sooner.

What the Big 12 will resemble in a few years remains uncertain. Texas and Oklahoma said they will honor current contracts until 2025 when television rights with ESPN and Fox run out. Both schools would have to pay a buyout of $80 million to leave early.

See here for the background. Scheduling could be a little chaotic over the next season or two until everyone gets where they’re going. I’d bet a nickel on all the moving parts settling into their new places in time for next fall, but there’s a lot that could cause delays. I assume the AAC will now go trawling for some new members, so there’s still more to this story. In the meantime, congrats to the Coogs for finally catching the car they’ve been chasing since 1996.

The Big XII is finally ready for UH

Sep 7th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Hope it was worth the wait.

Five years after a potential match fizzled, the University of Houston and Big 12 Conference are on the verge of uniting after all.

UH has emerged as a leading contender to join a reconfigured 12-team Big 12 with a formal vote planned for next week, two people with knowledge of the talks said Thursday.

The shift comes just over a month after Texas and Oklahoma announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference, starting another round of conference realignment that could eventually fulfill UH’s longtime desire to join one of the major conferences in college athletics.

Earlier reports Thursday by ESPN, The Athletic and the Dallas Morning News said the Big 12 has targeted UH, BYU, Central Florida and Cincinnati as expansion candidates to join the league’s eight remaining schools. Long the powerbrokers of the Big 12, Texas and Oklahoma have accepted invitations to join the SEC in 2025.

The Big 12 requires eight of its current 10 members to approve candidates before expansion can occur. A person with knowledge of the process said UH is expected to receive unanimous approval.

The Morning News said the expansion timetable “remains very fluid,” with one source saying, “it can move as fast as everyone wants it to.”

[…]

By adding UH, UCF and Cincinnati, the Big 12 would raid the American Athletic Conference, which has long been considered the best league outside of the so-called Power Five that includes the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Pac-12 and Big 12. The addition of the three schools would allow the Big 12 to remain involved in the Houston television market, extend its reach to Florida and add a Cincinnati program that begins this season in the football top 10.

BYU, which is independent in football, brings a strong national brand, large fan base due to its affiliation with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and rich football tradition. All of BYU’s athletic programs except football currently play in the West Coast Conference.

See here for some background on the last time UH was on the Big XII dance card. As you know, this is all the result of UT and OU saying good-bye to the Big XII for greener pastures. Cincinnati and UCF make sense as additions and BYU is a nice get, probably the biggest non-Notre Dame free agent out there, but it’s going to make for some geographic challenges – Utah is a long way away from the next closest school in the conference. The PAC 12 probably makes more sense logistically for BYU, but they decided to stand pat for whatever the reason. BYU is now the center of another political and religious fight, which may bring some negative attention to their future conference and conference-mates, but that’s more or less the cost of doing business these days. The UH Board of Regents is having a special meeting today to discuss their Big XII prospects, and I think we can expect that they will go along with any plan to join up. So congrats, Coogs, you finally made it.

UPDATE: UH’s Board of Regents has officially approved pursuing Big XII membership.

Feds take first steps in the mask mandate fight

Sep 2nd, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Coming attractions.

The U.S. Department of Education is opening civil rights investigations to determine whether five states that have banned schools from requiring masks are discriminating against students with disabilities, the agency said on Monday.

The department is targeting Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah, all Republican-led states, in its investigations. It said it was concerned that their bans on mandatory masking could leave students with disabilities and underlying health conditions more vulnerable to COVID-19, limiting their access to in-person learning opportunities.

“It’s simply unacceptable that state leaders are putting politics over the health and education of the students they took an oath to serve,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

“The Department will fight to protect every student’s right to access in-person learning safely and the rights of local educators to put in place policies that allow all students to return to the classroom full-time in-person safely this fall.”

[…]

Florida, Texas, Arkansas and Arizona are four other Republican-led states that have banned mandatory masking orders in schools. The Education Department left those states out of its inquiry because court orders or other actions have paused their enforcement, it said in a news release.

The department says it is monitoring those states and would take action if local mask-wearing policies are later barred from going into effect.

See here for the background, and here for the press release. It’s too early to say how this might go, and that’s before we get a resolution in the reams of mask mandate-related lawsuits that are still working their way through our system. Suffice it to say that the good guys have a lot of fight left in them.

The PAC-20?

Aug 7th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Here’s one possible outcome for the left behind members of the Big XII.

According to multiple reports, the commissioners of the Pac-12 and Big 12 met Tuesday to discuss how the conferences might benefit from working together or maybe even merging.

The merging part has us very interested.

A full merger of the Big 12 and Pac-12 would create a 20-team conference with schools in every major U.S. time zone, something no other conference has.

That would make it unique and very different and potentially pretty valuable in the ever-important TV contract discussions for conferences.

What could a Big 12 and Pac-12 merger look like?

Here’s some possibilities to split up the conference, should the Pac-12 and Big 12 decide it is in their best interests to join forces.

You can read the rest. There’s lots of reasons why this probably won’t happen, but it’s at least amusing to contemplate. We live in very strange times.

Also in the “we live in strange sports times” news department:

American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco said the league has never “plotted” with ESPN to pursue teams from other conferences.

“Our conference has never strategically aligned or plotted with ESPN to influence conference structures,” Aresco said Wednesday during a video conference call to kickoff AAC media day.

Aresco said the AAC is not actively looking to add schools.

“I want to emphasize we are not looking at realignment and not out there attempting to take teams,” Aresco said.

[…]

Aresco said he has not spoken to any Big 12 schools.

“Any suggestions or statements that we colluded with ESPN with regards to the structure of any other conference is completely unfounded and grossly irresponsible accusation,” Aresco said.

See here for the background on that. We’ll see if Bob Bowlsby provides some receipts for that initial claim. In the meantime, if the AAC and every other conference isn’t thinking about realignment and what they might do about it, I don’t know what they are doing. I’m not saying they should want to live in this ever-religning world, but I am saying it is the world they are in fact living in, and they should adjust accordingly.

Big XII visits the Lege

Aug 3rd, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

It’s something to do, anyway.

As the University of Texas prepares for a jump from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference, state lawmakers are working to determine how the move will affect the rest of the state — and whether they might be able to intervene in such a move in the future.

The first hearing of the committee on the future of college sports in Texas on Monday produced more questions than answers. Senators, economists and representatives of the universities left behind brainstormed how the Big 12 could remain viable — perhaps by adding up-and-coming Texas programs such as the University of Houston and Southern Methodist University.

But with the exits of UT and the University of Oklahoma sealed, there was little lawmakers could do but commiserate and propose potential solutions.

“I think there are options for us to partner with other conferences, there may be opportunity for mergers, there may be opportunities to add members,” said Bob Bowlsby, the commissioner of the Big 12 Conference. “There may be other opportunities that are currently unforeseen. … The multitude and severity of the challenges that are out there right now is likely to cause lots of changes.”

The eight remaining schools — which include Waco’s Baylor University, Fort Worth’s Texas Christian University and Lubbock’s Texas Tech — agree that “staying together is probably our best approach in the near-term,” Bowlsby said.

[…]

State Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound and the chair of the newly formed committee, said she’d invited representatives from UT and ESPN to testify on Monday, but they declined. Texas A&M, which left the Big 12 for the SEC in 2012, also rejected an invitation.

See here for some background on the committee. Nothing is going to happen, as this issue isn’t on the special session agenda and of course there’s a quorum break going on, but everyone got to express their feelings, and I’m sure that helped. As for UT, they weren’t there to share their perspective, but they still had something to say.

University of Texas at Austin President Jay Hartzell on Monday publicly defended the school’s decision to leave the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference along with the University of Oklahoma in 2025 and denied Texas lawmakers’ claims that the school violated Big 12 bylaws in doing so.

“This future move is the right thing for our student athletes for our student athletes, our programs and our University in the face of rapid change and increased uncertainty,” Hartzell said.

[…]

“It is timed to avoid the legislature in its legislative session, where it is structured with the power to make decisions,” said Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury.

Hartzell said that he initiated discussions with the SEC in the spring — while the regular legislative session was going on.

He disputed claims made by lawmakers and Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby that the Texas school violated the league’s bylaws by not giving advance notice of their departure.

“I want to set the record straight — we have and will continue to honor all agreements,” Hartzell said. “We have not violated any Big 12 bylaws.”

Lawmakers argue that the process was done in the dark, and would have far-reaching effects on the remaining schools in the conference, notably the three that reside in Texas.

See here for more on the accusations of UT and OU’s alleged duplicity along with ESPN. Lord knows, this Legislature knows how to do things in the dark. Game recognizes game.

Big XII accuses ESPN of sabotage

Jul 31st, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Interesting!

In the long, sordid and divisive history of conference realignment, there has always been feverish levels of mistrust, backroom allegations and message board conspiracies when schools switch leagues. But in the decades of cloak-and-dagger maneuverings, political gamesmanship and rival in-fighting that have always accompanied realignment, we’ve never seen a moment like Wednesday afternoon.

Yahoo Sports first reported that the Big 12 sent a “cease and desist” letter to ESPN essentially demanding the television network stop plotting to sabotage and cannibalize the league. Commissioner Bob Bowlsby accused ESPN of attempting to “harm the league” for ESPN’s financial benefit. That wasn’t even the most memorable part.

From there, Bowlsby did a series of media interviews where he accused ESPN of plotting with another league – later revealed to be the American Athletic Conference per Yahoo Sources – to attempt to kill off the Big 12. Essentially, Bowlsby said he found evidence that ESPN had been “providing incentives” to a league to lure the Big 12 leftovers away after Oklahoma and Texas bolted without warning.

“What pushed me over the top was a couple of days ago when it became known to me that ESPN had been working with one or more other conferences and even providing incentives for them to destabilize the Big 12 and approach our members about moving away and providing inducements for the conference to do that,” Bowlsby told Yahoo Sports in a phone interview. “That’s tortious interference with our business. It’s not right.”

There’s more, so read the rest, and see the letter in the original story. ESPN denies the allegations, as you might expect. I have no idea what happens next, as I have definitely been operating under the assumption that this is going to happen and will very likely happen well before 2025, but this suggests there will be a lot more friction than I anticipated, and that the Big XII will aim to make it as expensive as possible for UT and OU. And, apparently, ESPN. We’ll see how that works out for them.

Meanwhile, since this is of course all about money, there’s this.

The decisions by the University of Texas and University of Oklahoma to seek to leave the Big 12 Conference to join the Southeastern Conference could affect more than just which teams they play. The decision can also have a big economic impact for the rest of the Big 12 and the communities that are home to their teams.

The move is not yet approved, but if it goes through, it could cost as much as $1.3 billion a year in lost athletic revenues, tourism spending and other economic activity for communities across the Big 12, according to an analysis by Ray Perryman, an economist and CEO of the Perryman Group, an economic consulting group in Waco.

Without Texas and OU, the rest of the conference is likely facing smaller television deals, lower attendance, and other negative consequences, Perryman said in a report released Thursday.

Ray Perryman is the go-to guy for this kind of economic analysis, and you have to respect his ability to crank them out in such a timely manner. I don’t doubt that the remnants of the Big XII will do worse without UT and OU, and some of that will trickle down to the cities the schools are in. I suspect those numbers are overblown, but I couldn’t say by how much. The report is here, judge for yourself.

SEC accepts UT and OU

Jul 30th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Time to start printing the money.

The Southeastern Conference voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to invite the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Oklahoma to join their 14-member league during a meeting with the league member’s presidents and chancellors.

“Today’s unanimous vote is both a testament to the SEC’s longstanding spirit of unity and mutual cooperation, as well as a recognition of the outstanding legacies of academic and athletic excellence established by the Universities of Oklahoma and Texas,” Commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement. “I greatly appreciate the collective efforts of our Presidents and Chancellors in considering and acting upon each school’s membership interest.”

[…]

Meanwhile, UT and OU could see their revenue climb significantly through the move from television revenue, ticket revenue and additional branding opportunities.

The decision may also tie into a Supreme Court ruling last month that says athletes can earn money based on their intellectual property, meaning flagship schools must find new ways to earn revenue.

Although UT and OU said in their letter to [Big XII Commissioner Bob] Bowlsby that they don’t plan to renew their deal with the conference past 2025, there is speculation that the two schools would not be bound by the Big 12’s contract if the conference dissolves before 2025. They would need to pay a penalty of more than $75 million for leaving the league early, but are still legally required to give 18 months’ notice, per Big 12 bylaws.

“I have every expectation that Oklahoma and Texas will do whatever they can to not meet their [contractual] obligations,” Bowlsby told CBS Sports. “That’s what they’ve done so far.”

After two closed session meetings this week, the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents voted late Wednesday afternoon to support Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC, despite concerns the Board had over the “communication process.” A&M joined the SEC from the Big 12 a decade ago.

“The board concluded that this expansion would enhance the long-term value of the SEC to student athletes and all of the institutions they represent — including Texas A&M,” the statement read.

See here for the previous update, and see here for the story on the A&M Board of Regents getting on board, presumably once they realized the money involved. Put a pin in that quote from Bob Bowlsby, there will be more about him and the Big XII tomorrow. You know I believe that UT and OU will be playing SEC conference games well before 2025, but there may be more obstacles in that path than I first thought. The Chron has more.

UT and OU make it officially official

Jul 28th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Smell ya later, Big XII.

After a week of speculation, the University of Texas at Austin announced Tuesday that alongside the University of Oklahoma it has asked to join the Southeastern Conference starting July 1, 2025.

The news came a day after both schools announced they would not renew their media rights contract with the Big 12 in 2025. If the two schools were to join the SEC, they would join the likes of top football schools such as University of Florida, Louisiana State University and the University of Alabama.

“We believe that there would be mutual benefit to the Universities on the one hand, and the SEC on the other hand, for the Universities to become members of the SEC,” UT President Jay Hartzell and OU President Joseph Harroz, Jr. said in a joint letter to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey.

Sankey said in a statement that while the SEC hasn’t actively pursued new members, it will welcome change when there is consensus among members.

“We will pursue significant change when there is a clear consensus among our members that such actions will further enrich the experiences of our student-athletes and lead to greater academic and athletic achievement across our campuses,” Sankey said.

The move leaves the rest of the Big 12 conference, which includes Texas Tech University, Baylor University and Texas Christian University, in a state of uncertainty. Monday afternoon, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in a statement that the remaining eight institutions will work together to ensure future success.

“Although our eight members are disappointed with the decisions of these two institutions, we recognize that intercollegiate athletics is experiencing rapid change and will most likely look much different in 2025 than it does currently,” Bowlsby said. “The Big 12 Conference will continue to support our member institutions’ efforts to graduate student-athletes, and compete for Big 12 and NCAA championships.”

The Monday news was about saying goodbye to the Big XII, or at least saying that they wanted to say goodbye. This is about saying Hello to the SEC, which one presumes will be returned in kind. I suppose it’s possible that things could go pear-shaped from here, but that would be a huge upset. Most likely, if you’re a Longhorn or Sooner, get ready to start shelling out for new SEC-branded gear.

A personal anecdote: Back in 2003, during the long special session slog to re-redistrict Texas on Tom DeLay’s orders, Rice played UT in a football game at Reliant Stadium. I contributed a bit to the MOB halftime script for that show, which was about the redistricting saga and how we should never leave the task of redistricting to politicians. “After all,” the bit concluded, “the last time the Governor got involved with redistricting, Baylor wound up in the Big XII”. It got a big laugh from the mostly UT fans. Seems like the joke holds up pretty well all these years later.

There is of course political involvement in this round of Conference Bingo, and so naturally our state’s biggest self-promoter has rushed out to the front of the parade in hope of being mistaken for a leader.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has asked Sen. Jane Nelson to chair a new select committee on the “Future of College Sports in Texas,” a move that came hours after Texas and Oklahoma issued a joint statement to the Big 12 that served as the first step toward leaving the conference.

In a tweet sent out Monday night Patrick said the committee’s purpose would be to “study the athletic & economic impact to TX schools & communities by UT’s exit.” A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 2.

This is just the latest bit of political theatre in the face of the state flagship’s impending departure from the Big 12, a conference it founded in 1994 that currently includes four Texas-based members: UT, Baylor, TCU and Texas Tech.

Hey, Dan, let me know when you plan to have a hearing to fix the grid and claw back some of the money that was heisted from way too many paying customers from the freeze.

UT and OU make their official move to exit the Big XII

Jul 27th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It’s just a matter of time now. And money. Always money.

The University of Texas at Austin announced Monday morning that it will not renew its sports media rights contract with the Big 12 that is set to end in 2025, giving the first formal signal that it’s planning to leave the athletics conference.

The decision comes after rumors surfaced last week that UT-Austin and the University of Oklahoma would leave the Big 12 and join the Southeastern Conference, which would then include 16 schools.

The move was announced in a joint statement from UT-Austin and Oklahoma.

“Both universities will continue to monitor the rapidly evolving collegiate athletics landscape as they consider how best to position their athletics programs for the future,” the statement read.

[…]

The financial impact on the [remaining] schools could be devastating. Records show that media rights represent the single largest income stream for Texas Tech athletics. Its total athletics revenue during the 2020 fiscal year was $90.4 million, meaning the Big 12 payouts accounted for more than one-third of its total earnings.

That major-conference money helped allow it to limit the amount of money the university transfers into its athletics department to under $50,000. Public universities outside of major conferences in Texas have been known to funnel millions into their athletics programs to keep the departments afloat. (TCU and Baylor are private schools, and their financial numbers are not public.)

See here for the previous update. I’m old enough to remember that one big reason why the old Southwest Conference fell apart is that some schools thought some other schools were not pulling their weight in terms of financial reward for the conference as a whole. (A broader geographic appeal, and thus bigger potential TV audiences, was another significant factor.) Speaking as a Rice Owls fan, I feel your pain, Texas Tech and Baylor. Sucks to be on the other side of that, doesn’t it?

Sources from the Big 12 told ESPN that Monday’s statement from UT and OU doesn’t fully guarantee that the schools remain in the Big 12 through 2025. There is the possibility that they can pay a penalty of more than $75 million for leaving the league early and give a required 18 months’ notice, per Big 12 bylaws.

There is also speculation that OU and Texas would also not be bound by the Big 12’s contract if the conference dissolves before 2025, according to the publication. If the future of the Big 12 conference is in doubt, other schools could also look elsewhere for a landing place.

I for one would bet on UT and OU making their exit from the Big XII well before 2025. All of the previous breakups, starting with Arkansas leaving for the SEC in 1990, happened within a year. Whatever the contract terms are now, UT and OU will have plenty of incentive to buy their way out of them, and the remaining schools will ultimately take the cash as a preferable option to uncertainty and a hell of a lot of awkwardness. I will be shocked if UT and OU aren’t fully integrated into the SEC by the start of the 2023 football season, and it would not surprise me if they’re there for 2022. That’s the world we live in. The Chron and Slate, which runs some financial numbers, have more.

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