Big 12's meandering journey ended up in the right place: No expansion

GRAPEVINE, Texas — With straight faces, they insisted they hadn’t mashed the accelerator toward expansion back in July. And that the quasi-public way the process unfolded, all the way until the end, was actually positive.

It was all so … Big 12.

There was stumbling. And bumbling. And plenty of unintentional comedy. What else did you expect from the league that put the "fun" in dysfunction? But after everything, there’s also this: The Big 12’s presidents made the right call.

“Bigger is not always better,” said Oklahoma president David Boren, chair of the Big 12’s board of directors, adding:

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Big 12 decides against expanding beyond 10 members

It may be broke. But it’s probably not fixable. Given the available candidates, if the goal was to strengthen and solidify the weakest of the Power Five conferences, expansion was never the right answer.

It didn’t make sense 22 months ago when co-champions Baylor and TCU were left out of the first College Football Playoff field, setting off a long offseason of what Commissioner Bob Bowlsby called “soul-searching.”

Or 15 months ago when Boren pronounced the league “psychologically disadvantaged” compared to its Power Five peers with larger memberships.

Or in July when the Big 12’s presidents shocked everybody — and we mean everybody, including the Big 12’s athletic directors — in directing Bowlsby to “actively evaluate” the interest of potential expansion candidates.

And expansion also did not make sense Monday, when the whole thing finally, mercifully ended.

It should not have taken all of that. The potential candidates, all from the Group of Five, have never been a mystery. Nothing has changed since the last round of conference realignment. While Bowlsby said he found the schools he researched would have been “additive” in value, the reality is more what Boren said last June, when he cautioned, “We want to make sure (expansion candidates) are not dilutive.”

The real attraction might have been the $25 million per new member, per year, from a pro rata clause in the league’s TV contracts. But it’s likely ESPN and Fox, who had no interest in expansion, will pay something short of that for the league to stand pat.

It’s unseemly that the process went public — though it was entirely predictable. The decision in July set off something very much like open auditions from a couple dozen schools hoping for a call-up. Eventually, the Big 12 essentially put 11 finalists — ELEVEN! — through their paces, a dog and pony show, only to have Bowlsby call Monday afternoon to inform them, in succinct conversations, that it was all for naught.

“It was perhaps a little more of a sweepstakes than we might have thought it was gonna be at the very beginning,” Bowlsby said. “But it was a very good process.”

That’s an understatement followed by a very debatable sentiment. Here’s guessing the folks at, say, BYU or Cincinnati or Houston or insert your favorite school here don’t see the process, now that it’s over, as having been a very good one.

But from the Big 12’s perspective? The outcome is positive.

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The presidents and chancellors met, beginning Sunday evening and continuing until midday Monday, in a conference room at the Grand Hyatt/DFW. It’s unclear exactly what the discussion was in North America B and C on the basement level of the hotel in Terminal D.

Bowlsby made a 90-minute presentation. Consultants made separate pitches. Boren said the presidents discussed expansion for five or six hours, and that they never got around to considering individual candidates. The only vote — except don’t call it that — was a “unanimous … decision” not to expand.

“We decided after a very short discussion that we would remain at 10 members,” said Boren, whose views on expansion had personally changed when it became clear TV partners had no interest in a conference network.

And that was that. From there, Boren talked a lot about how strong the Big 12 is, and how unified the presidents were in coming to this decision, how committed their schools are to the league. The truth, however, is the Big 12 remains fundamentally unstable and likely to break apart when the current TV deals expire in eight years. But here’s the thing:

Expansion would not have changed anything.

Not unless the league’s members also agreed to an extension of their media grant of rights. They did not.

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Boren said the topic never even came up during the meetings. And although he said Oklahoma does not “have a theological position” against extending the grant of rights, and said the discussion should logically be tied to a new TV deal, there remains zero indication that either Texas or Oklahoma ever had any desire to consider an extension.

With 10 teams or 12 — or 14 or 16 or 24 –— the Big 12’s future still comes down to what happens a few years from now, when Texas and Oklahoma evaluate their options.

“No one’s looking to walk away from this conference,” Boren said, because that’s what you say in these cases — strength and unity and all of that, you know, until the time comes.

In a few years, it’s quite possible the Longhorns and Sooners bolt for other leagues. Or that they remain in the Big 12, believing it offers the best, smoothest route into the College Football Playoff. It’s all about what’s in their best interest.

What was in their best interest — or in this case, the entire league’s — was to stand pat. They’ll end up making additional TV money for not expanding. Beginning next season, they’ll play a conference championship game — it’ll be weird, after a round-robin schedule — to provide that 13th data point for the Playoff selection committee to evaluate. Whether that helps or not, who knows? With 10 teams and without a conference title game, the Big 12 has made and missed the Playoff. Adding members wouldn’t have guaranteed much of anything.

A text message sent by a Big 12 insider shortly before the news conference read: “Given the options this has been the right call all along.”

Along with the message, balloon emojis floated happily up the screen.

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