BYU and Houston are the top Big 12 expansion candidates, according to an ESPN poll of the league’s football coaches.
Advertisement
But this time, after pledging their interest at an afternoon meeting of the conference’s board of directors, the Big 12 said it was finally, truly, quite possibly going ahead with the process of accepting applicants to expand the league.
On Tuesday it became known that the Big 12 has voted in favor of expansion.
University of Oklahoma President and Big 12 Chairman David Boren told reporters this week the conference will generally gauge each candidate by five criteria – strength of athletic program, fan base, media market, academic standards and reputation.
On a conference call following a meeting of the league’s board of directors (the university presidents), Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby and Oklahoma president David Boren all but said to Cincinnati, Houston, BYU and all other interested candidates: go ahead. Now conference leadership will be meeting with schools.
However, per Carlton, Bowlsby did make sure to note that the conference will not be distributing finances evenly for the new programs immediately: “There isn’t any question there will be a phase-in from a revenue distribution standpoint”.
“The problems that we’re dealing with at Baylor or have dealt with at Baylor to this point are probably problems at every university in the country”, he said.
Overall, Bowlsby said he was satisfied with the progress Baylor has made.
“Their parents are upset”, Grobe said, “because all that’s being said, all we talk about, are the issues that led to Art losing his job and the AD and the president, and there’s not much said about all the good kids who are here”.
Hitt reiterated his push for UCF to join the Big 12 Wednesday afternoon following a press conference to introduce the school’s new baseball coach, Greg Lovelady.
The other schools receiving votes included Cincinnati and Memphis with four votes each and with one apiece, Colorado State and Central Florida.
CBS Sports’s Dennis Dodd predicts that BYU and an American Athletic Conference team will be the additions, although he also hinted that the team from the AAC might be less red and black and more blue and white. They’re far away from the Big 12 in geographic terms and don’t have much of a TV market.
Even though there’s strict guidelines to get in the conference, Boren didn’t rule out the possibility of not just adding two teams, but left the door open to add four.
The Big 12 will have a football championship game in 2017, but there are still plenty of schematics to figure out before the first game is ever played. And which schools are willing to accept less money for the longest period of time could help determine whether an institution gets an invite from the Big 12. The championship game adds another $20-30 million and a digital network as a precursor to a cable network would produce revenue as well. New members would not receive full shares initially, so there is a strong financial incentive for the current 10 members to expand by four.
“There’s no doubt that expansion gives some marginal gain”, Boren said June 3. On the other side, Texas wanted to stay at 10 – and keep its own Longhorn Network in place.
So despite the overwhelming opinion that conference expansion had stalled due to the lack of interest in a network from its broadcast partners, it is now likely the conference will be growing after all. Even Boren was backing off. At the same gathering, the group suggested the time wasn’t right and may never be to pursue a conference television network.
The good news for the Big 12 Conference is that there is no shortage of suitors. He said “we can not just sit on the sidelines and not be proactive ourselves”.
Advertisement
UConn is among the schools that have sent signals of interest to the Big 12.
