Big 12 Expansion: Should the league return to 12?

The following article appears in the Spring 2016 edition of Powercat Illustrated, which mailed to subscribers on Friday, February 26. It is based on an analytical study of potential Big 12 candidates, comparing each of those schools to each other.

The Big 12 Conference’s presidents, the true leaders of the alliance, met in early February to discuss the direction of the league amid a growing desire from at least two of the schools to expand the Big 12 from its current 10 members to at least 12.

There are a number of issues facing the league, including playing a conference title game in football now that the NCAA said it can do so with only 10 schools, and the ongoing concern that the Big 12 will soon be the only one of the five major football conferences to not have a league television network. That remains impossible as long as Texas clings to the revenue from the failing Longhorn Network.

Expansion, however, haunts this conference going back to 2011 when the initial wave of conference realignment nearly drove the Big 12 into extinction.

Oklahoma president David Boren and West Virginia president E. Gordon Gee have both gone on the record in favor of expansion, which is notable because they comprise the Big 12’s “expansion committee” along with Baylor president Ken Starr.

“When you look at the Big Five conferences, we’re the one with only 10 members, we’re the one without a playoff, we’re the one without a conference network,” Boren told the Tulsa World in January. “And when you look at the long-range stability and the well-being of the conference, I think we’re disadvantaged by being the ‘little brother,’ so to speak, by being smaller. I think expansion is crucial. We’re way past due.”

The 10,000-pound steer in the middle of the road to expansion remains Texas, which lords over the conference in such a heavy-handed manner that it almost crushed the Big 12. The conference’s largest university played a significant role in driving off four founding members during the last round of conference realignment.

Of all the schools that have switched conferences, only former Big 12 founder Texas A&M bolting to the SEC has offered a major power shift in the world of college athletics. A&M was the mother lode of what conferences seek in new members: Major TV market (Houston), a national draw, an academic fit into the current membership of universities, an important adjacent state to existing league signature, successful athletic programs and offering access to new recruiting territories.

BREAKING DOWN THE CANDIDATES, A SCHOOL-BY-SCHOOL ANALYSIS

COMING TUESDAY: SOLVING AN EXPANSION SCHEDULING DILEMMA

With every major conference (other than the SEC, which simply does not need to do so) locking down members now with long-term grants of media rights. If a member leaves the league, the profits from their TV rights stay with the league, no school in the current “Power 5” football conferences will be making a move anytime soon.

That is, of course, unless a school feels confident it can make such a move and win the legal battle.

So, should the Big 12 look to return to 12 members? The presidents are split on the issue and now have voted to be publicly silent on the issue.

“There’s still a diversity of opinions on lots of issues that you all are most interested in, size and championship games and network opportunities and all those sort of things,” Kansas State president Kirk Schulz said at the post-meeting press conference. “I feel we’re converging. We’re getting excellent data and information from some of the best consultants out there. … At the end of day, when we’re done with the whatever the package of things that we’re going to do looks like, we want there to be a 10-0 vote and all institutions to say we think this is the best for us.

“And that takes a little while to get there. I think that’s the direction we’re moving in.”

The argument against expansion is simple: Ten works fine. It’s best expressed as a “we’ve got ours” approach represented by the Longhorn Network and TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte telling the Austin American-Statesman, “Ten is a beautiful number.”

Keep in mind, that TCU is only part of the 10 because it and West Virginia were recently invited into the Big 12 to keep it alive in 2011.

The thoughts in favor of expansion are more tangled, but it starts with the simple belief that the departure of one more existing member will topple the conference. Adding more members gives the league a stronger base to survive.

Boren believes the conference severely erred when it did not invite Louisville into the Big 12 — it has since joined the ACC — along with a 12th school, likely Cincinnati, following the departures of A&M, Nebraska, Colorado and Missouri.

A look at a map clearly indicates how that would have prevented West Virginia from being stranded on an eastern island in the Big 12. A solution to that issue remains a top priority in potential expansion, meaning further growth into the Eastern time zone remains likely despite the existence of strong candidates to the west of the current Big 12.

The Big 12 remains the only Power 5 conference with fewer than 12 members, and only the Pac-12 sits at that number. The Big 10, SEC and ACC all have 14 members for football, and Notre Dame competes in the ACC in all sports except football.

If the other four conferences want to move to the more functional 16-member format, 10 schools will need to be added to their membership roles, which just happens to be the exact number of Big 12 members.

The vultures seem to be circling, awaiting the inevitable demise of the Big 12 that will eventually be driven out of business on its current timid path. The conference’s lack of visionary leadership and whimpering approach toward the mighty Longhorns set this table, and those problems persist even now.

Schulz pushes back against the idea that the league is weak at 10 members, saying, “Frankly, it drives me bananas. I don’t necessarily understand why it’s out there.”

If the Big 12 collapses, though, becoming a fringe member of the Pac-16 or ACC would be the best-case scenario. Lacking a major TV market or recruiting region, K-State could be thrust into life in the Mountain West or the American Athletic Conference, which was launched in 2014 when the Big East’s basketball-only schools broke away.

Many of those schools are prime targets for Big 12 expansion, with Cincinnati the most likely candidate for inclusion because of its mix of athletic success, proximity to West Virginia and strong football recruiting base in Ohio.

“I’m in favor of expansion. I think (OU’s Boren) is expressing what we’ve been thinking,” West Virginia’s Gee recently told the Charleston Gazette-Mail. “The notion of going to 12 (schools) is most likely.

“Would I like to have maybe another member of our conference in this part of the world? Probably so, but those are discussions that are going to take place, and certainly that is part of the consideration.”

If the demand is for a unanimous decision, then the Big 12 may likely follow the same do-nothing path that led to it sitting idly by while the league was nearly plucked clean. Texas, OU, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech nearly bolted to the Pac-whatever last time to give it 16 schools. That would have left K-State facing a perilous future and possibly split it from its rival, Kansas, in conference affiliation. The Big 10 would likely add KU in any future realignment, but would not have interest in

K-State based on academic reputation.

Schulz, who declined to comment for this story based on a self-imposed conference gag order following the league meeting in Dallas, did offer a glimmer of hope for those who insist that doing nothing in the near future leaves the Big 12 with no future.

“All 10 CEOs are open to the idea of looking at the number of schools, a championship game and what a (league) network might look like,” Schulz said, noting that the league has hired “the best” consultants to assist the conference in the process.

“We’re ready to do what we need to make sure the conference is strong,” he added. “We’ve come a long way in the last six months. If we’re committed to the strength of the conference, then it becomes tactical.”

That comes across as cryptic, but the blunt truth in the expansion dreams is reality. There are no slam-dunk candidates, such as A&M bolting to the SEC, Nebraska to the Big 10 or Colorado (Pac-12) and Missouri (SEC) turning to their regional roots for a new home.

One look at the possible expansion candidates outlines a dilemma. Two of the strongest athletic fits, BYU and Boise State, cause the conference even greater regional issues. Plus, BYU was strongly considered by the Big 12 during the last round of invitations, but doomed itself by putting too many demands on the league. Those issues, such as refusal for religious reasons to compete on Sundays and the egotistical belief that it is the Notre Dame of the West, have not gone away.

There are two slam dunks in terms of adding TV markets and giving the Big 12 a stronghold in a major recruiting territory, but adding Central Florida and South Florida only seems plausible if the expansion is beyond 12. And that doesn’t seem likely unless schools from Power 5 conferences can escape their current arrangements.

Plus, don’t forget that expansion would be directed by university presidents, not athletic administrators, meaning academic reputation could play a bigger role in the process than the average fan may grasp. For scholarly types, adding an academic power such as Tulane that lies just across the Texas border in New Orleans may be their way to exert their wisdom on a process drenched in financial gains.

However, the top goal of this expansion is to solve West Virginia’s geographical isolation, and with that is a likely desire to not create a new problem by inviting in another lone program from such far-flung states as Florida or Utah. Once the additions are chosen, how does one schedule? The once-used North vs. South divisions would leave the South clearly more powerful in football and the North with far greater travel demands for member schools and their fans.

East vs. West. 12 vs. 14 vs. 16. Academics vs. Athletics. Regional Divisions vs. No Divisions?

Most importantly: How will this truly impact conference media revenues? More members means more games, and thus existing television deals increase to address the added inventory, but can the conference entice Texas into evolving the Longhorn Network into a Big 12 Network, possibly by offering an added cut of the revenue? And would a Big 12 Network soar like the SEC Network’s money machine or flounder like the ill-conceived Pac-12 Network that has hit-and-miss coverage?

There are many decisions in this process and the conference, again, seems to be suffering from a paralysis of analysis. It is unable to escape the reality that it missed a better chance to expand not only by adding Louisville, but by also exploring taking from other major conferences. An air of stability for the ACC has replaced rumors in 2011 of dissatisfaction within the ACC’s ranks.

Back then, when movement was pliable and rewards awaited the bold, the Big 12’s conference leadership chose to be good citizens in a realignment world of thieves and double-crossers. Noble? Certainly. Perilous? Very.

Now the Big 12’s expansion reality isn’t nearly as tantalizing, but neither is staying at 10 schools, which despite the kind thoughts of Kansas State’s president does indeed lead to a timid image for the Big 12. That weakness will certainly be fatal if the villains again rise from the conference realignment bowery in search of new members to add to their riches.

“There may not be an ideal number of the conference,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told reporters after the meeting of the conference’s leaders. “Many of the options that are available are compromises. You do one thing, you compromise in another area. You do something else, you compromise in another area.

“If there were perfect members and perfect formats, it would have been easy to do a long time ago. But that’s just not the nature of it.”