Univ. of Texas men’s AD DeLoss Dodds on Monday sat for a Q&A with the TULSA WORLD’s John Hoover, where he discussed the school's Longhorn Network and the Big 12 Conference's new TV revenue-sharing policy. The following is an excerpt from that interview.
Q: With the Big 12 announcement (Monday) that equal revenue sharing is now affirmed for Tier 1 and Tier 2 television revenue, can you explain why Texas won't share any of its LHN money or Tier 3 money?
Dodds: It's never been shared before. There's never been any there. We've worked it. We've made something good out of it. Nobody else in the country shares it, except Big Ten and Pac-12 because they did conference stuff. They did conference networks. Florida doesn't share their third-tier.
Q: A question I've gotten a lot is why the Big 12 presidents and chancellors can't ask for a vote on sharing Tier 3.
Dodds: It's never been on the table. It's just never been there.
Q: If they wanted to, could they say, "Let's vote on this?"
Dodds: They could vote on it. But they might not get it. You know? It's just never been a part of the deal. It'd be like us going to Oklahoma State and saying, "Hey, you got $160 million from Boone (Pickens). I think we ought to have a share of that." They'd say, "Well, that's not fair." There are just some things that are done differently. We're not gonna share Oklahoma State's money, and they're not gonna share our Tier 3 stuff.
Q: On the academic side of it, those (LHN) revenues will be distributed to various parts of the university. Is that why it's not up for negotiation?
Dodds: Yeah. Bill Powers, our president, and I talked about it. They're 10 percent of the network, and they're gonna get 50 percent of the revenue. Over a five-year period of time, that's $30 million. And we've done nothing on this campus that's been better for the relationship between academics and athletics than $30 million.
Q: The perception is that Texas is being painted as the bad guy, the evil empire or whatever. Longhorn Network probably helps perpetuate that. Does that concern you as the man in charge here, that the Texas brand is taking a PR hit?
Dodds: We're good people. And we do it the right way. And we've got 550 kids that we love, and we treat them the way they're supposed to be treated. And we're in it for kids. We didn't do the Pac-12 (because of) the kids. It wasn't money, it wasn't anything else. We don't want to put our kids in airplanes and have them in airplanes half their life going back and forth (TULSA WORLD, 10/5).
