[|Zach|]

Just part of the article we linked to a million times with Loftin from A&M recapping expansion from the Aggies "12th man" magazine.

Q: In the summer of 2010, there was plenty of conference realignment talk. What brought everything back up in 2011?

Loftin: Let me take you back to June of 2009. I was interim president and within a few days of that time, I attended my first Big 12 board meeting in Dallas. Even though the presidents who were there were obviously civil and got along pretty well, it was clear there was some degree of difficulty within the conference then in terms of relationships. I call it the haves and have-nots. It was very clear which schools had money, and we were sort of in the middle of that pack. That’s where I first began to have some degree (of concern) on where the stance of the conference was. In the fall of 2009, we began to hear rumors about UT meeting and talking with the Pac-10. I was actually in Austin in December 2009 meeting with (University of Texas president) Bill Powers. At that point, I had asked everyone but him to leave the room so we could talk privately. I asked him if there was any conversation between him and the Pac-10 and his answer basically was, “I can’t talk about that.” The next month, he was in College Station, and we met in my office. I had the same question, and he gave me the same answer.

Go forward to the April (2010) timeframe…I got a call from (Pac-10 commissioner) Larry Scott indicating he wanted to come see me. Scott shows up here, and we have a meeting. Basically they had been working for months, and he had schedules of not just football but, basketball, soccer and baseball, and they had been working hard on this thing. He did a presentation for us on here’s how we are going to do this. I obviously began discussing this privately with the Board of Regents, and the basic direction I got from them was, “Look, we’ll probably get an offer from the Pac-10 to go join them along with five other schools in the Big 12.” The chairman of the board said to me, “One option is no option. You better figure out what things A&M could do besides follow Texas and other schools to the Pac-10.”

Q: Were you dumbfounded by this development?

Loftin: No, I had heard rumors. Powers wasn’t talking to me; I heard rumors and was not completely surprised. After I had this conversation with the board, I made a phone call to (SEC commissioner) Mike Slive and said, “Mike we need to talk.” Ultimately, he came here to see me, and we had a discussion about the SEC as a possible home for Texas A&M. That was late April to early May of 2010. We had a lot of other discussions going on by the time, and we had a clear sense the Pac-10 wanted to do this.

Q: Did you feel uncomfortable that Texas was trying to persuade A&M to tag along with it to the Pac-10?

Loftin: Clearly we weren’t driving the train. We were passengers at best, and that was a concern. You don’t want to have your destiny usurped by someone else. We slowed things down, and there was political pressure to not allow the Big 12 to dissolve. As we got to the early June meeting of the Big 12 board in Kansas City, (Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe) had all the presidents, chancellors and all the athletic directors in one room. There were 24 of us there, plus Beebe and a few of his staff. Beebe polled the board and said he wanted us to declare whether we were committed to the Big 12 or not.

Three schools didn’t commit at that point, and the answer I gave was different from everyone else’s. I said that A&M was committed to the Big 12 as it is today. I chose those words very carefully. Since then, I have been accused of being a liar because I committed based on a 12-team conference as it was structured in June 2010. I said my words very carefully because I was not going to set myself into a situation where the conference was radically changed and we would be committed to being in a conference we didn’t really want to be a part of.

Q: What was the tipping point to possibly leaving the Big 12?

Loftin: We went to a meeting, and it was very clear there were three schools that were looking at leaving. There were six other schools that were looking at going to the Pac-10. Over that next week, we felt the pressure building heavily. Then Larry Scott took a private jet and made his rounds to all the six schools. He went to Oklahoma first, then Oklahoma State, and then he came to see me, then to Texas Tech, and was headed back down to Texas. We were at a Sunday meeting at Easterwood Airport. Scott had a draft letter of invitation for me to see. In the conversation I said, “You are aware now that UT wants to retain its local rights to be able to have (its) own network.” Larry said that couldn’t happen. He said he made it clear to President Powers that would not be allowed. I said, “Well, I think there is a misunderstanding here.” I think that was a third factor in the following days for UT not to proceed. I wasn’t there; I can’t prove it, but I think they had a strong conversation.

Q: You pointed that out to Commissioner Scott?

Loftin: Yes. I said, “Larry, you told us what the rules are and we understand that. I am hearing from UT a different story right now, and you better explore that with them.” They did, so I think that was part of the equation. We slowed things down, there’s a little (political) pressure, and then this (Longhorn) network thing came about. Unfortunately, Bill (Byrne) was in Idaho that weekend, and the next day we couldn’t communicate well. I finally reached Beebe, and he had five secured letters from other schools that would guarantee a $20 million payout for us, UT and OU if we stayed in the Big 12. That’s where we were that Monday afternoon, and then UT announced they were not going to leave and it all kind of fell apart then.

Q: Did you always feel the SEC was a viable option for A&M?

Loftin: In June of 2010 after we made the decision to stay in the Big 12, the first conversation I had was with Mike Slive. We were talking about maybe going to the SEC at that point, so I owed that to Mike and said, “Mike, this is the direction we are going right now, and I want you to know that I really appreciate the interaction we have had over the last several months.” We talked a couple times in the fall of 2010, then I ran into him physically at the Cotton Bowl and we just had a social conversation. I always had a sense that the doorway there was not closed to us and we could certainly come back and talk about this in the future.