“But it indicates that we live in a very fast-changing world, situations change quickly”. That would eliminate one big negative for BYU’s inclusion into the league: a policy of not playing on Sundays that could have a big impact on several Big 12 sports and postseason championship schedules.
Advertisement
The Big 12 won’t give full shares to new members upon arrival.
“We want to find the strongest possible partners for expansion”, Boren said.
So who would be at the top of an expansion list for the Big 12 Conference? That is, if a school is, for instance, only willing to take $5 million a year for the next ten years, it could allow $200 million it would be entitled to receive to return to the existing ten Big 12 conference schools to split among themselves. SI.com quoted an anonymous conference source who said adding at least two schools is “nearly definite” and adding four schools is “highly possible”. “We simply don’t know enough at this point in time to evaluate what the financial terms may be and whether or not a network, a linear network, what the shape of it will be or what the financial terms will be going forward”.
The Big 12 has been studying expansion for what seems like forever, but Tuesday was the league’s most tangible step toward actually expanding from 10 teams since inviting TCU and West Virginia into the league following Missouri and Texas A&M’s exit in 2011.
Even though Bowlsby did say the conference would consider “football only” members, it’s important to consider other sports than just football and basketball. The BOD made a unanimous decision to start exploring the interest in other schools to join the conference. “We’re looking for conferences that offer opportunities to grow our football program as we get into year five and beyond of FBS play”. Boren said it is a step toward expansion, but is still an exploratory stage.
What’s yet to be determined is how much the four schools would be paid up front per year through the length of the contract in 2025. And we have…I think there are certainly those among our board to go back to Brian’s question that have felt that the image of the Big 12 and the other members of the Big 12 have been sullied as a result of this incident. In response to the Board’s request for information, Baylor interim president David Garland, regent’s chairman Ronald Murff and David Harper, academic and student affairs committee chairman met with the Board for over two hours. Tuesday marked the Big 12’s official mutual interest.
BYU is without a conference, making them logical fit.
“Like I’ve said before and a lot of us have said over the course of the last six or seven months, as a community, as an alumni base as a university, we really need to focus on the things that we can control”, White said.
Baylor’s mess became less of a topic once the expansion talk rekindled. Many Cougars fans believe they should have been invited five years ago. With Big 12 stability, you never can be sure.
Advertisement
Here are the major players the UMass contingent will be keeping tabs on, as laid out by SI’s Pete Thamel in a column discussing the Big 12 expansion scenario on Tuesday: “The leaders in the clubhouse for Big 12 expansion remain BYU, Cincinnati and CT”. “We were assured of the university’s commitment to keep the conference appraised going forward”.
