ESPN and the University of Texas announced a blockbuster of a deal. The 20-year agreement will allow ESPN to launch with the university, along with their media partner, IMG College, a 24-hour network devoted to the University of Texas.

Oh, and the deal is worth more than $300 million to UT over the next two decades.

If you do the math, that is more than $12 million per year. And yes, yes. We all know that Texas possesses possibly the top athletic department from the football program down to gymnastics or water polo or marbles, or whatever the Longhorns have invested in recently. But $300 million for one school?

I can think of two reasonable explanations for such a deal, and neither really includes the occasional academic speech on the correlation between flu vaccines for pets and the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that will inevitably be shown on the network.

First, it could be that ESPN realizes that no fan base as large as Texas’ is as arrogant and self-aggrandizing when it comes to their university. There are a lot of alums from the University of Texas that would pay mightily to revel in the 1969 “Game of the Century” against the Arkansas Razorbacks with Richard Nixon in the stands. And of course, they won’t actually watch the speech about pet flu vaccines and carbon dioxide, but Longhorn fans that never even attended a single class at the University of Texas will beat their chest about how great the academics are in Austin.

I don’t really think that is it. I’m not even sure that ESPN expects to make money off the deal. One school, $12 million a year? And they have to make their money off of subscriptions to the network? To break even, ESPN would have to have at least half a million subscribers willing to shell out a couple bucks a month or sell lots, and I mean lots of advertising to a very finite and relatively small demographic.

Call me a skeptic.

In truth, I see this as something a bit more, well, sinister isn’t the right word because I’m a capitalist. It reeks of collusion between the University of Texas and ESPN.

The numbers per year are strikingly similar to those that every SEC school gets with the conference’s deal with the worldwide leader in sports. SEC teams earn $12.5 million per year in their current contract with ESPN. However, this is based on multiple football games every Saturday during football season on ESPN and their affiliate channels while hitting several high profile markets. It’s a good deal for both sides.

But the SEC brand can only generate so much money regardless of how many markets are near SEC institutions. ESPN has already banked on the SEC being a national market. Adding more regional markets has limited value to ESPN at this point.

When the talks of expansion came about, it appeared set in stone that six schools from the Big XII were about to bolt for the Pac 10 and form the Pac 16. In fact, Colorado did. Nebraska saw the writing on the wall, and headed for greener pastures to the Big Ten.

For several days, it appeared that Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State were all on board the West Coast train together. It was a done deal according to the orangebloods.com website, the University of Texas-based site that seemed to be breaking the news by the hour, on the hour and beating everyone to the punch.

And they should have been beating all the other media outlets to the punch. After all, it was the University of Texas driving the expansion discussions in the first place. The UT fans and administration will deny it, but what is obvious is obvious.

But then the SEC happened. The vile, nasty, evil Southeastern Conference that everyone loves to hate. While the Pac 10 and Big Ten were gearing up to wage war against the SEC by bringing in multiple members, the SEC patiently waited the storm out. They sat in the shadows until the deals were all but done and then shell-shocked those who had constructed and agreed upon the entire plan.

They offered Oklahoma and Texas A&M spots in the SEC. If the Pac 10 was going to expand to 16 teams, the SEC wasn’t going to take it without a fight.

They offered arguably the best football program since the Big 8 turned into the Big XII, Oklahoma, and a school that would allow the SEC to tap into the Texas media markets, Texas A&M.

OU thought about it and said “no thanks.” Texas A&M gave it some long thought and almost pulled the trigger.

And if A&M was going to join the SEC, another school from somewhere, presumably on the east coast, would be soon to follow. If the Pac 10 and Big Ten were adamant about getting to 16 teams, the SEC was not going to stand pat at 12.

Thus the deal with ESPN comes into play. If the SEC had expanded to 16 teams, ESPN would almost be forced to renegotiate their deal with the SEC to the tune of $50 million more per year. Negotiating a $12.5 million per year deal with the Longhorns would save ESPN over $560 million over the next 15 years with the SEC if it meant saving the Big XII and ending the massive expansion plans. With the SEC games being shown nationwide already, it’s hard to imagine that ESPN could generate another $40 million every year in ad revenue to pick up the cost, even with the expansion of new regional markets.

The Aggies ultimately decided against joining the SEC, but it became clear that they weren’t going to be told what to do by the University of Texas anymore. The Longhorns have had a stranglehold on their conference dating back to the first days of the Southwest Conference.

The Longhorns helped run the Southwest Conference into the ground by making sure they always got the biggest piece of the conference pie. The old SWC was never a fair deal for anyone but the University of Texas. Once Texas joined what was then the Big 8, the same disintegration of a once mighty conference nearly happened again.

And the Aggies of Texas A&M apparently had enough. They drew a line in the sand, and it became pretty clear that even if the Aggies made the move temporarily to the Pac 10, joining the SEC down the road was more than on the table- A&M was ready to dig in like Boss Hogg at the Boar’s Nest in Hazzard County.

While Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State were willing to tuck their tails and bow to the power of the University of Texas, it was Texas A&M that put a halt to the madness that the Longhorns were going to throw on the landscape of college football. Texas A&M, a school once known for their academics in agriculture, grew something besides crops.

A pair. And Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State went running up to big Momma Bear, the University of Texas.

With Texas A&M teetering on the brink of making a decision that would force the SEC to expand and cost ESPN millions, it appears that ESPN and Texas came to a backroom deal. ESPN will eat $12 million per year with the hopes upon hope of breaking even to keep Texas firmly entrenched in the Big XII. In fact, William Powers Jr., the UT President, said that Texas was “firmly committed” to the Big XII in regards to this deal.

Want more evidence? The Big XII commissioner, Dan Beebe, guaranteed Texas, OU, and A&M $20 million annually in conference distribution if they would not leave the Big XII. Then we saw OU and Texas spokespersons say they understood the situation of the Big XII and would not force the conference to live up to that financial promise as a sign of their solidarity and loyalty to the Big XII.

Not Texas A&M. They had a monster deal waiting on them in the SEC, and they would not let Texas calf-rope them into a lesser deal than was already guaranteed.

Good for you, Texas A&M. The Aggies and the Razorbacks are seemingly the only programs to date with the gumption to tell the University of Texas what they can do with their corrupt system of controlling the conference. Of course, the Razorbacks had enough in 1991 and left the Southwest Conference for the SEC. It appears that Texas A&M is willing to make the same move.

So while the national pundits were hailing Dan Beebe as the savior of the conference and congratulating the Longhorns and their university for their “loyalty” to the Big XII, the truth was that Texas A&M was the saving grace for the conference.

ESPN didn’t want to shell out an additional three-quarters of a billion dollars to host SEC games over the next fifteen years. The answer was to play to the Longhorn’s greed. The very thing that threatened to put an end to the Big XII ended up being part of the solution that saved it.

Of course, expect to see Longhorn apologists at the ready claiming all of this to be bogus and trumped up charges. Possibly. But, then again, I would like to see the correlation between Longhorn ego talk and carbon dioxide parts per million in the atmosphere.

I bet it’s more than the pet flu vaccines. I also bet we don’t see that speech on the new Longhorn network.