Talks ‘stall on a deal for Oklahoma & Texas to leave the Big 12 early for the SEC’

Hopes that the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas could leave early for the Southeastern Conference (SEC) seemed to be dashed.

Negotiations for the two schools to leave the Big 12 Conference in 2024 to join the SEC have stalled, reducing the likelihood of a deal, according to ESPN.

The reports say the parties “could not agree on how to create equitable value for what Fox would lose in 2024, the equivalent of seven football games with Oklahoma and Texas demanding premium advertising.”

Big 12 officials and the schools hoped to reach an agreement this week, as the conference was already in a series of meetings.

The two schools agreed to join the SEC in the summer of 2021, kicking off the latest in a series of major NCAA conference realignments on a scale not seen since 2010.

There could be some space for the two schools to leave, considering negotiations are underway for them to leave in 2024, rather than 2023.

“There is no formal timeline or edge that you cannot return from. But that’s the way things are at the moment: an agreement is unlikely to be reached,” industry sources told ESPN.

Since the announcement in 2021, Oklahoma and Texas had been rumored to be looking for a way to leave the Big 12 early.

However, it seems that the tangled web of television contracts, programming and other costs would be too costly and unwieldy for all parties involved.