All’s Quiet On The Big 12 Realignment Front, Sort Of

The Internet exploded last week when the final College Football Playoff rankings were released and the Big 12’s top contenders, TCU and Baylor, were left on the outside looking in. At that point, everybody and their mother mused about the next move for the 10-team Power 5 conference.

After weeding through the noise, a few main truths emerged.

1) Cincinnati was contacted by the Big 12 at some point and are at/near the top of their list of expansion candidates.

2) There’s a sizable fracture between the interests of most Big 12 AD’s and their commissioner Bob Bowlsby.

3) The Big 12 will prioritize adding a 13th game.

Since then, things have been quiet on the realignment front. The Big 12 hasn’t extended UC an official invite, or it hasn’t be publicized, and it seems the idea of expansion has cooled off. But if you’re a Cincinnati a fan, and if you’re reading this blog chances are you are, it shouldn’t be particularly concerning.

While there was chatter last week from the Yoda’s and Dude’s of the Twitterverse, it’s likely UC wouldn’t be thrown a lifeline until somewhere around the time the Big 12’s current television contract expires roughly a decade from now. At earliest, conference expansion wouldn’t kick off until a few years closer to the end of the contract.

Cincinnati Bearcats

Even if the Big 12 tried to increase membership early, rumor has it Fox is requiring the conference to expand their 16 million household reach by 20-25% and supposedly add a new time zone in order to bring in at least one new school. Those are just rumors of course but would definitely put Cincinnati and their 875,000 households in the Eastern time zone out of luck (thanks, West Virginia).

At the same time, though, it seems Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby is empathetic to the Mountaineers being left on an island in the Appalachians with the other conference teams hundreds of miles away in the Great Plains. There’s no better travel partner out there than Cincinnati right now.

So either Bowlsby’s talking out of both sides of his mouth or it’s just another case of rumors being thrown at walls with no idea of what is sticking.

Regardless, I’m fairly confident a major driver of Big 12 expansion will be the NCAA’s ruling on their waiver to add a conference championship game with just 10 schools. The one thing the Big 12 can agree on is that a 13th game is necessary to propel one of their teams into the College Football Playoff. If the conference is denied again, there might be just enough internal pressure to add an 11th and 12th school such that a title game is possible. Cincinnati will be one of those teams should the carousel start moving again.

I’m not sure what the next six months, year, or five years hold for the Big 12 and Cincinnati. Conservatively, UC is married to the AAC for the next half-decade. Optimistically, the Lindner Center is hanging Big 12 banners by Summer 2015. There’s been a boatload of chatter in the last few weeks around realignment and it makes sense on too many levels (market size, athletic success, academics, enrollment, etc.) for the conference to add UC. However, no rumor will be proven it holds water until an official announcement from the Big 12 or Cincinnati is held.