Eleven days ago, Bob Bowlsby stood at the podium in the middle of AT&T Stadium and addressed the media. When the question of realignment came up, Bowlsby was almost flippant in his response, saying “[realignment] motivation is essentially gone. The cable universe has shrunk 20 million households already. It’s going to continue to shrink as we migrate to digital consumption and streaming. And so a lot of the motivation for realignment is no longer there.”
One week later, his conference was in shambles.
When news broke Wednesday that Texas and Oklahoma were on the verge of leaving the Big 12 Conference and securing an invite to the SEC, the reaction was pure shock.