AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- Just over a week after speculation was first reported, the Southeastern Conference has officially voted to welcome the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma to join the conference in time for the 2025-26 academic year.
The 14 existing members of the SEC, including Texas A&M, voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to extend invitations to the two schools.
"Today's unanimous vote is both a testament to the SEC's longstanding spirit of unity and mutual cooperation, as well as a recognition of the outstanding legacies of academic and athletic excellence established by the Universities of Oklahoma and Texas," said SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. "I greatly appreciate the collective efforts of our Presidents and Chancellors in considering and acting upon each school's membership interest."
The addition of Texas and Oklahoma will put the SEC at 16 schools, and will reunite Texas with Texas A&M, who haven't faced each other in football since the Aggies left for the SEC prior to the 2012 season.
Texas' Board of Regents is scheduled to meet Friday morning at 9 a.m., with a posted agenda item involving "discussion and possible appropriate action regarding athletic conference membership matters." Oklahoma's Board of Regents is also set to hold a meeting Friday morning, solely to discuss the same topic.
While all involved are pointing to July 1, 2025 as the date the two schools will leave the Big 12 and move to the SEC, it remains to be seen if the Big 12 will remain intact until then. Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby has publicly accused ESPN of interfering with the conference and its teams, pushing other conferences to target the remaining members of the Big 12.
Texas and Oklahoma would each face a buyout of as much as $80 million if they were to leave the Big 12 prior to the 2025 date; however, if the conference dissolves because its remaining members find other homes, the buyout would go away - and the teams could be freed up to move sooner.
"I have absolute certainty they (ESPN) have been involved in manipulating other conferences to go after our members,” Bowlsby said Wednesday in a phone interview with the Associated Press. The conference sent a cease-and-desist letter to the sports network Wednesday; ESPN, for its part, calls the accusations "entirely without merit."
Texas and Oklahoma moving to the SEC could have significant impacts on the other Texas schools in the Big 12 - Texas Tech, Baylor, and TCU. Those impacts have gotten the attention of Texas lawmakers, some of whom have called for legislative action to try and block the move, but it's not clear those efforts will get anywhere, at least prior to the 2023 legislative session.
Prior to making the move to the SEC, Texas is already scheduled to face a couple of SEC foes in non-conference football games. The Longhorns are set to travel to Arkansas on Sept. 11, and have a home-and-home series on the schedule with Alabama for 2022 and 2023.
As far as the A&M-UT rivalry is concerned, Texas leads the all-time series with a 76-37-5 record. The road teams won the last two matchups, with the Horns taking the final game in College Station in 2011, while the Aggies picked up the road win in Austin in 2010.