While the rumors are swirling about who the Big 12 may add, SOE’s David Ubben reported that that Cincinnati and UConn sit atop the conference’s so called “fluid wish list”.
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After a meeting of the Big 12 university presidents and chancellors on Tuesday, Oklahoma President David Boren says the conference is still considering whether to add two or four teams to its 10 members.
One day after the Big 12 presidents unanimously approved exploring expansion, conference Commissioner Bob Bowlsby talked about the process of bringing in new programs.
“We want to find the strongest possible partners for expansion”, Boren said. “But other schools have come to us”. “I think in the end, these organizations most times do things by acclimation”.
“We have reports from our two groups of consultants that have been working with us in terms of evaluating the interest of other schools and also those that have been giving us advice as to our media relationships and the media contracts going forward”, Boren said.
Overall, Bowlsby said he was satisfied with the progress Baylor has made.
The league lost Nebraska (to the Big Ten), Colorado (Pac-12), Missouri (SEC) and Texas (A&M) in the last round of expansion before adding TCU and West Virginia from the Mountain West and Big East, respectively.
The conference has being batting around the idea of adding more members for more than a year and begins its search with plenty of suitors.
Numerous schools have been pitching the Big 12 behind the scenes for months, including much of the American Athletic Conference, including Cincinnati, Memphis and Houston, along with BYU, Colorado State and others.
BYU could also be invited as a football-only member.
DEFENDING WILDCATS: Four Kansas State defenders were named to the preseason All-Big 12 team selected by the media: linemen Will Geary and Jordan Wells, linebacker Elijah Lee and defensive back Dante Barnett. “There are a number of factors that will be considered, and the commissioner will be evaluating as he contacts schools that have expressed interest to us”. That’s when the conference announced it would bring back a championship game in 2017, most likely with two five-team divisions, and would not pursue a conference cable network.
The reconstituted Big 12 in 2014 hailed its round-robin football schedule as the way to produce “One True Champion”, but the slogan looked silly when it ended up with co-champions that season. It was thought to be dormant after the league’s decision to add a championship game and pass on a television network.
When asked Tuesday how long he planned to keep coaching, the 55-year-old Stoops said he is excited as he was his for his first season as the Sooners’ head coach, and hopefully will go 10 more years or so.
There were plenty of questions from Oklahoma and Texas reporters asking if the Big 12 planned to boot Baylor or if the conference was going to sanction the Bears in some way. Expansion also seemed unlikely coming out of those meetings.
Boren said the ACC’s decision had some bearing on the board of directors’ conversation Tuesday, although it was too early to tell what kind of financial impact the network would have or even what it would look like. The grant of rights virtually locks conference members together.
“We can’t just sit on the sidelines and not be proactive ourselves”, Boren said.
While it has previously struggled to gain a foothold, once again the Big 12 has an opportunity to be one of the strongest conferences in the U.S. Bowlsby gave some insight on what types of schools he’s looking for. None is guaranteed to deliver both highly competitive teams – especially football teams – as well as large new markets to increase the value of future media deals.
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“It indicates that we live in a very fast-changing world, the situation is changing quickly”, Boren said.
