Well, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlesley may have done the gutsiest thing of his tenure as time as Big 12 Commissioner, and that is going the war with ESPN.

I'm Pete Mundo. We're Heartlandcollegrossports.com. It's great to have you guys on board as we keep track over the last crazy week of conference realignment talk with Oklahoma and Texas off to the SEC.

What's next for these other eight teams? Kevin Keatsman is podcast. Kevin Keatsman has issues,

absolutely outstanding based in Kansas City and also the longest tenured and the best sports

talk show host to do it in this town. Kevin, it's great to

have you on. Take me through this. First off, from a media perspective, does this make sense for

Bob Bullsby to wage this war? It's the only card he can play. I mean, you hate to go to war with

ESPN, as you preface so beautifully. But here's the problem.

If he doesn't, and the league falls apart, then it's over and nothing was gained.

If he fights this battle and they win, and I do think, and the people that I've talked to say

they have pretty good legal standing here with their contracts against Oklahoma, Texas, ESPN,

and likely the AAC.

If they're in good legal standing, they still get about a billion two over the next three plus years, four years in their contract.

There's massive exit fees for Oklahoma and Texas that we're not sure how they're going to get out of.

They may have to stick around for four more years, which would certainly be uncomfortable for Oklahoma and Texas and everyone in the Big 12. But why not dig in? Why not fight ESPN? If you cave,

you're just going to wind up splintering the conference all over the place, making less money,

ESPN wins. If you win on this deal and you save the conference and you add, let's say,

somewhere down the road, four new schools,

do you think ESPN's not going to come back at some point and bid on that conference?

Of course they are.

Even if they tell you they want you to play on Thursday nights or Friday nights or, you know, not prime time,

certainly not when the SEC is on.

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