Texas challenged the Big 12 to a game of chicken and won

You're familiar with the game of chicken, aren't you. Two hots shots challenge each other to a drag race, but instead of crossing a finish line, they aim their cars toward a major precipice. The first driver to jump out of the car before they both go over the side is said to the be "the chicken" and is held up for all his peers to ridicule. Oh, to heck with it. Just so see the great movie Rebel Without a Cause and you'll understand chicken.

By now you know the story: Texas was going to lead three, four or five (the number depended on who was spinning the tale) other members of the Big 12 Athletic Conference to monetary nirvana in the PAC-10 Conference.

All along, what Texas really wanted was two things: (1) It's own television network and (2) Getting rid of the dang conference football championship game (why this second demand, I don't know). The Big 12 was not hot on either idea. If there was going to be a network, the conference reasoned, it should be a conference network, like the one the SEC has and the one the PAC-10 wanted but couldn't have unless it absorbed Texas, not a one-team network. And that dang conference football championship provided big hunks of cash into the conference's bank account.

Texas countered with, "If that's the way you feel, then we're just going to go to another conference that will promise us almost as much money as we would make with our own network and would not insist on a conference championship game."

Things came to a head over the weekend when the commissioner of the PAC-10 officially visited three schools - Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas - and then today issued each of them invitations to join his league.

With that, the Big 12 blinked - it jumped out of its car first and told Texas it could have its own network. With that, Texas announced it would remain in the conference and Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas A&M, all of whom basically let Texas do all the heavy thinking for them, said minutes later it would remain as well in what is now a 10-team conference (which is important because 10-team conferences can't stage conference championship games.) Besides, those latter three schools couldn't make any significant moolah in a PAC-10 that didn't have Texas and Texas' network means those schools will probably make, while not nearly as much as Texas, about twice what they are earning now from television revenues.

Personally, I love the idea of a 10-team conference, although they are going to have to change the name of the league (I'm going with the Midwest Conference until someone comes up with something I like better). This way, each team plays every other member of the conference every year and can still round out a 12-game schedule with three out-of-conference games.

All that's left now is to determine who will carry the Longhorn Network. The SEC has a deal with CBS and Notre Dame and NBC have a pact (although NBC would like to find a way out of it). Personally, I like the way Fox handles the NFL on Sunday, so that would be my first choice.

We'll just have to wait and see. But if Texas plays the TV execs the way it played the Big 12 Conference, you know the the University will come out the winner.