R. Steven Hicks says UT's network agreement won't change.
For the University of Texas, the question of which athletic conference would be the best fit involves more than TV revenues and travel logistics. It's also about academics and the academic pecking order.
UT, which aspires to the uppermost rungs of academia, wants to be in a league with some high-ranking schools. That's because officials of the university believe that an institution's academics and character are judged in part by the company it keeps on the fields of competition.
By that standard, the Pacific-12 Conference would be an attractive option. So would the Big Ten Conference, although travel and other obstacles could be considerable.
The Southeastern Conference, which Texas A&M University wants to join? Not so much.
The Big 12 Conference, current home of UT and A&M, is moderately strong academically. But its future is uncertain, complicated not only by A&M's desire to leave but also by the refusal of conference members Baylor University, Iowa State University and the University of Kansas to waive legal rights to sue the SEC if the Aggies' departure causes the Big 12 to implode.
UT has said it has no intention of suing the Southeastern Conference or any other athletic conference that admits a departing Big 12 school.
UT President William Powers Jr. told the American-Statesman last week that he would avoid public comments on conference realignment "until we see how all of this sorts out." But he has previously listed academic compatibility as a consideration along with TV revenues and travel logistics for student-athletes, their family members and fans.
Powers' predecessors have also factored academics into the conference equation.
"When we looked at conference alignment in the past, the quality of the institutions' academics was a very important consideration," said William Cunningham, a former UT president and chancellor who is now a professor of marketing administration at the university.
The gold standard for judging a university's performance in the classroom and the laboratory is membership in the Association of American Universities, or AAU, a group of 61 leading public and private research institutions in the United States and Canada. Membership is by invitation only.
UT has been a member since 1929. A&M, admitted in 2001, was rebuked last year by the AAU for adopting reforms promoted by Gov. Rick Perry, including bonus pay for teachers based solely on student evaluations. Some saw the rebuke as a not-so-subtle warning that A&M's membership in the AAU could be in danger.
Currently, the Big 12 has five AAU schools among its 10 members. Besides UT and A&M, they are Iowa State, Kansas and the University of Missouri.
Although UT officials have said that their first priority is to keep the Big 12 together, they are simultaneously considering other options. And academics figure into that calculus.
U.S. News & World Report puts UT No. 13 among national public universities, tied with the University of Wisconsin. UT officials are shooting for much loftier heights.
The Commission of 125, a blue-ribbon panel, issued a report in 2004 urging UT to strive to become one of the top five public universities in the nation. Powers wants to be first among those five.
Joining the SEC is apparently out of the question on academic grounds — never mind the daunting competition the Longhorns would face on the football field, where schools in that league have won the past five national championships.
Of the 12 SEC schools, just two — the University of Florida and Vanderbilt University — belong to the AAU.
The Pac-12, which UT nearly joined during last year's episode of conference musical chairs, would be a better fit academically. Eight of its 12 schools are AAU members, including such academic heavyweights as Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley and UCLA.
And if the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University left the Big 12 for the Pac-12, UT's travel logistics in that league would be eased by getting to play such teams, as well as the University of Colorado, the University of Arizona and Arizona State University.
It's not clear whether UT's Longhorn Network could be accommodated by the Pac-12 — or any other league, for that matter — without some sort of reworking or downsizing.
"I understand we're committed to our partnership with ESPN on the Longhorn Network, and I don't see anything that changes that going forward," said R. Steven Hicks, a member of the UT System Board of Regents.
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