The long-awaited Sooner Sports TV was unveiled last week, and it seems like we'll have to wait a little longer for Oklahoma State to follow suit.
In between, both Texas Tech and TCU signed on with
Fox Sports Net. The deals presumably aren't that valuable -- although OU is said to be taking in about $5 million extra per year. But at this point, money isn't the issue.
As Bob Stoops likes to say, "Texas has always had more money than everybody."
No, the $5 million isn't what's important. It is, as Eric Bailey pointed out in our story last week (you can read it
here) this number OU, OSU, Tech and TCU should care about -- 9 million.
That's the approximate number of households that get Fox Sports Southwest in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico.
While the Longhorn Network has struggled to reach major cable systems -- only Verizon and AT&T carry the station nationally -- Fox Sports Southwest is available to just about every home with a pay television service in this part of the country.
The Fox Four can't match Texas in revenue, but now they more than match the Longhorns in reach. And that's the most important part.
At least for Texas' opponents, the Longhorn Network has always been about exposure and recruiting -- not money.
Bob Stoops says he only wants Texas to follow the same rules as everyone else when it comes to recruiting. But the Longhorns changed the game. Now OU, Texas Tech, TCU and soon Oklahoma State have fought back the best way they could.
Fox Sports has acknowledged its loss of Houston Astros and Houston Rockets broadcasts made these deals financially possible. Those losses could have another fringe benefit for the Fox Four -- more exposure in the extremely fertile Houston recruiting area.
Without Astros and Rockets games to broadcast, Fox Sports Houston will have thousands of available programming hours. It stands to reason these deals -- especially the live men's and women's basketball, baseball and other Olympic sports -- will help fill that void.
If that's the case, the deals with Fox Sports may give OU and OSU the kind of exposure money -- even ESPN/Longhorn Network money -- can't buy.
As I mentioned in a previous blog (you can read it
here) the Longhorn Network isn't much of a TV network, but it's one heck of a recruiting tool.
Now OU -- and soon OSU -- will have an avenue of their own. Certainly a Big 12 Network would have been better for everyone.
But given the league's "everyone for itself" mentality, OU and OSU are doing the best they can.
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