Big 12 eyes still focused on Longhorns and network

“I would agree that my antenna went up when I started to hear that information,” Gundy said. “I have faith in the athletic directors in the league and the Big 12 that we’ll make the right decision in that area.”

As for the actual football, the Sooners got 41 of 43 first-place votes in a preseason poll of media who cover the Big 12. Texas A&M, Oklahoma State and Missouri were all picked to finish ahead of Texas, which was 5-7 last year after going to the BCS national championship game the previous season.

Brown said the network is a “real positive” for the Longhorns and credited Texas administrators for the ESPN partnership.

“It was available to everybody, and they pulled it off,” Brown said. “I didn’t think they could do it. I kept hearing about it for the last couple of years and I never dreamed that it would happen. …. I’m glad we have that advantage.”

Adding to an advantage the Longhorns have had for a long time.

“Do I worry about? Not a bit. I mean, they’re pretty hard to recruit against anyway,” said Baylor coach Art Briles, whose team is coming off its first bowl game in 16 years. “They can do it. If there’s a need for it, people are going to pay for it, more power to them. Let them have it.”

Brown doesn’t think showing high school games on the network would impact recruiting for Texas. He said most of the 20-25 high school players the Longhorns sign each year commit before their junior seasons.

He believes instead that televising such games provides exposure to high schools and gives players the chance to be seen by other programs.

“I think the people that would be hurt if you don’t show high school games will be the high school coach, the players who 99 percent will not even play college football,” Brown said. “My gosh, the Big 12 is full of Texas high school football players. So if you think about it, there would be a lot more prospects from the other teams in the Big 12 on the network than the ones from Texas.”

What Brown has concerns about is how much access the network gets to preparing his team.

“It’s not going to be an easy partnership, because they’re paying us $300 million for access,” he said. “We’ve got to figure out how much access we can give them and not hurt our chance to have an edge to win the game.”

A network official wanted to show the Longhorns’ first scrimmage.

“And I said, `Yeah, Oklahoma, A&M, Kansas, Texas Tech, they’re going to be sitting there grading our practice as we do it,’” Brown said. “We can’t do that.”

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.