You hear it practically every month. Whether it be from a Star Wars-based Twitter account, some local court room beat reporter, or a legitimate news source, Big 12 expansion is top of mind for everyone and, even more so, so right around the corner that you can basically reach out and touch it. Most importantly for all of you, it may or may not involve the Bearcats and there have been plenty of rumors one way or the other since the latest round started up with West Virginia over four years ago.
I don’t tend to get sucked in by the rumor mongering. Let’s just start with this. If you spend hours and hours of your life either throwing conference realignment crap at a wall or fueling those people with never ending hypothetical scenarios and he said, she said, you need to thoroughly reevaluate your purpose on this planet.
That being said, all of that might come to an end in just a few months. According to The Oklahoman, the Big 12 is going to make a final (final-ish?) decision on expansion this Summer. Cue pro-expansion Oklahoma president Dave Boren:
"“We’re in a fact-finding mode, we’re in a data-gathering mode,” Boren said. “In other words, what will it mean to the stability of the conference? What will it mean financially to the conference?“We’ve sort of said to ourselves, come this summer, we’re going to have to finally make a decision about what we do. We cannot indefinitely postpone decisions. That’s what I had gotten frustrated about. I thought we were spinning our wheels.”"
Well that seems like good news. For my sanity’s sake we should be able to put all of those rumors to bed in just a few short months. For the sake of UC’s finances and the prospects of bigger and better things for Bearcats athletics, well, the advantages are more than obvious.
Big 12 membership brings with it several millions dollars to Cincinnati’s coffers by way of a $20 million media contract and that doesn’t even count College Football Playoff money. Sure UC would take a smaller portion in the first few years, if they followed West Virginia’s model. But the longer the Mountaineers spent in the Big 12, the greater their share became, upwards of $14 million in 2013-14. That would certainly go a long way to de-subsidizing the athletic department, where half of the revenue is being support by the school itself.
Plus you have marquee schools such as Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Iowa State (basketball), and Kansas (definitely basketball) visiting Clifton. UC could basically do next to no marketing and fill Nippert Stadium and Fifth Third Arena on a regular basis during conference play.
Truly the grass couldn’t look any greener in the Big 12.
But at this point, all of that is just a pipe dream for Cincinnati until an official announcement is made. If there’s one thing the Big 12 is known for besides high-flying offenses and what I assume is a bottomless supply of cowboy boots, it’s the leadership dragging its feet (boots?) on major decisions. They could certainly vote for or against expansion this Summer. Sure, I could see that. But how many times have we been burned before? Not in the sense of being left out of the Power Five but that the expansion rumors kick off with little to no meat behind them. The Big 12 constantly claims they’re “thinking about” adding new members, just like my parents would think about letting me get a puppy when I was a kid, and nothing came of it. They just kept toting the same line over and over again without taking action.
If that’s the case, it’s a coin flip whether their incessant procrastination or a Yoda Twitter account spewing rumors from their aunt who works in the Kansas athletic department kills me first.