PartyBear said:
The Baylor administrations should have known this was coming by around the mid 20s at the latest since 2010. Hopefully we have been working on things over the past 11 years regarding weathering this.
It's unclear that they knew it was coming, however, even if they suspected as much, what could have been done? The remaining Big 12 programs were going to take a hit without UT and OU and there was nothing that could have been done to prevent that since no big name programs were coming to the Big 12 after the loss of Texas A&M and Nebraska.
Personally, I believe that the Big 12 was on borrowed time after (1) it lost 2 of the most valuable programs in all of college football - Texas A&M and Nebraska - and (2) it's already limited footprint lost the states of Colorado, Nebraska, and Missouri while also losing complete control of Texas. There had been some hope that UT and OU would have accepted lower payouts in exchange to an easier path, however, with the passing of the NIL rules and the new SEC deal it became much more difficult to stay with the current Big 12. At the end of the day, it is what it is.