Kansas Jayhawks head coach Bill Self talked with media members on Friday and was asked about the deal signed by the Texas Longhorns and ESPN reportedly worth $300 million over 20 years. Clearly this is a major advantage for Texas though Self wasn't backing down.
"I don't know all the details except if you divide 300 by 20, it comes out to 15, which is a huge deal. It forces other schools' hands to be as aggressive as they can to lessen that gap. Instead of all our schools sitting around and complaining, ‘Well, that's not fair. They're getting 21 million plus 15 million. That's 36 (million dollars), and we're only getting 18 (million dollars).' Hey, that's not the way you look at it. The way you look at it is, ‘What can we do to get more money ourself?'
To me, there's a window. I don't know if there's a nine-school network that can somehow be put together. I don't know if it puts pressure on individual schools to do some things, but there's money out there to be had. Instead of whining about them doing their job, we (each) should be very aggressive in helping our respective school do theirs. I think it's a challenge to the presidents. I think it's a challenge to the athletic directors, but it's one that I think will raise the level for everybody else. It's amazing to me when one school does really good, other schools have to work their butts off to narrow that gap. You see that happen across America all the time. I think it will happen with our league, too."
And making sense of something like this is why Bill Self is the best representative of the Big 12.