Big 12 Decides Not to Expand

The Big 12 decided on Monday, months after announcing to expand, that they have decided to not expand.  It was announced that the school presidents unanimously voted to not expand.  This was most likely due to the fact they would not be able to agree on which schools would join the conference.

The three schools that were best suited competitively to join the conference all had their flaws.  Houston, with its top ten ranked football team, is located in a major the Big 12 is already in and already controls with its 5 other schools located in the state of Texas.  BYU and Cincinnati could have both given the Big 12 new television markets, with Cincinnati bringing in its home city, as well as Columbus and Cleveland, and BYU with its national appeal due to the school’s Mormon connection.  However, the latter 2 schools would be far outside the current Big 12’s geographical reach, and would create the same problems that adding West Virginia three years ago would have.  West Virginia has special scheduling rules for non-football sports, in order to help decrease its cost, and the other Big 12 schools face and increase in the traveling cost when the play West Virginia. 

Another main factor was the NCAA eliminating the need for a conference to have 12 teams in order to play a conference championship game. The expansion talks for the Big 12 began when Baylor and TCU were left out of the college football playoff in 2014, with many seeing the lack of a conference championship game as the main reason.  However, the NCAA has deregulated conference championship games, and the Big 12 will resume playing one next season.  This will allow the Big 12 to add more revenue through the game, and eliminated the need to expand by 2 teams, they could wait out expansion until they found a school that fit perfectly.

The final reason for the Big 12 to not expand was their TV partners, ESPN and Fox Sports, were not in favor of the expansion.  Fox Sports’ President came out yesterday before a decision was passed and said the network was not in favor of expansion.  Since the main reason for the conference to add teams is to increase its television contract, this was not ideal.  Fox Sports sees what happened with Big 10 expansion, when that conference added Rutgers and Maryland in order to join the New York, and Washington D.C. television markets.  Rutgers and Maryland have gone a combined 10-29 in Big 10 play since joining the conference.