The non playoff bowls are irrelevant. Nobody remembers them a year later
OU getting slaughtered by an SEC team (again) doesn’t help the leagues perception with recruits
But the real issue, the one we’ve all been carefully ignoring, is the new SEC TV deal. very soon teams from the B1G and the SEC are going to be making AT LEAST 10-15 million more that UT, the richest school in the conference and over 20 million more than the rest of us who aren’t UT or OU.
That sort of monetary disadvantage will radically shake this conference. It could mean a desperate alliance with the PAC similar to the merger of the SWC and B8 or it could mean our worst fear of UT and OU abandoning the B12 to join the B1G or SEC.
It’s coming so we best prepare because you don’t want bad sports and worse attendance when other leagues are debating if you’re worth throwing a life line to. We suffered through that before already.