Editorial: Small 10

The Big 12 Conference’s decision to not add teams highlights power of TV and begs questions about future.

The Big 12 Conference’s decision to remain at 10 teams may have been the right call, but it also feels like confirmation that the league is the weakest of the so-called Power 5 conferences.

Big 12 leaders announced Monday that expansion is off the table. The decision came after months of speculation that the conference would add at least two members. The league had spent much of the summer listening to pitches from and vetting potential new schools.

In the end, the Big 12 decided to stand pat, and it appears to not have had much choice given what appears to be a lack of expansion enthusiasm from the conference’s television partners.

“This was not a decision to not expand,” Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. “This was an endorsement and reinvestment in the 10 that we had.”

University of Kansas Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little supported the decision.

“As we have said all along, the priority for the University of Kansas and our athletics program is a strong and competitive Big 12 Conference,” she said. “The board’s unanimous decision … goes a long way toward ensuring the long-term stability and strength of the conference and its member institutions.”

What Bowlsby and Gray-Little didn’t say is that the money the Big 12 thought it could get by expanding wasn’t there. Expansion talk had been driven by contractual commitments from TV networks Fox and ESPN that would have meant an extra $50 million in TV revenue per year for adding two schools. There also was the idea of a Big 12 TV Network, like the SEC, Pac-12 and Big 10 have and the ACC will launch in two years.

But the TV brass made it known that the market wasn’t there for a Big 12 Network beyond the existing Longhorn Network, a partnership between the University of Texas and ESPN.

Fox and ESPN also made it clear they weren’t interested in the schools being interviewed for Big 12 expansion. Conference officials held interviews with Air Force, Colorado State, Central Florida, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Houston, South Florida, SMU, Tulane and Brigham Young.

There is speculation that ESPN and Fox offered more money for the Big 12 not to expand. Bowlsby would not discuss the specifics of the TV negotiations.

In the short term, it appears the Big 12 didn’t have a choice. TV wasn’t interested in Big 12 expansion, and in college sports these days TV money dictates decision-making. But it does make you wonder what the future holds for a conference that has the fewest members of the Power 5 and the weakest television appeal. That’s enough to make the nine members of the Big 12 not named the University of Texas a little nervous.