It's Official: Oklahoma and Texas Moving to SEC

That was fast! Only nine days after the first reports that Oklahoma and Texas could be headed to the SEC has the change been finalized. Both schools' boards of regents have now officially accepted the SEC's offer to join. According to the linked article:

The next step is to determine when the move will become a reality -- and what happens to the eight Big 12 schools left behind. On Monday, Texas and Oklahoma issued a joint statement saying that they intend to remain in the Big 12 through June 30, 2025, when the current Big 12 media rights deal expires -- but it's possible that the schools will attempt to exit sooner. Each university would have to pay a penalty of at least $75 million to $80 million to break that agreement or hope that the Big 12 dissolves before the contract expires.

Aside from the pun on "exit sooner," the interesting thing to me in that paragraph is the idea that OU and UT would stay in the Big 12 through June 2025. That would mean four more years of the two schools competing in the Big 12 as a sort of lame duck, which doesn't seem realistic. Some commentators have suggested that the $75-80 million-dollar exit fee would not be a major impediment to Oklahoma and Texas leaving earlier.

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About a week after I arrived in Lubbock in 1997 to begin my faculty career at Texas Tech (where I still am), I purchased a Big 12 t-shirt as shown below. Back during the 2010-2011 round of conference realignment, I started marking off schools' departures (on an image of my shirt, not the shirt itself). Losses back then included Texas A&M and Missouri to the SEC, Colorado to the then-PAC 10, and Nebraska to the B1G (Big 10). TCU and West Virginia joined the Big 12 at the time to give it 10 teams. It's taken another 10 years for any new changes to occur, but now they have in the form of Oklahoma and Texas's move to the SEC. Accordingly, I have updated my t-shirt diagram...