The Big 12 has ousted their Commissioner, Dan Beebe and replaced him with old Big 8 Commish Chuck Neinas- he's talking a good game about bringing the conference together and might be on the verge of nailing down an agreement to have all the Big 12 members sell their television rights to the conference for a six year period, which would essentially manacle everybody together for that time- which is a sensible move.
I expect Neinas will be pretty good about rallying the Conference, wringing some more concessions out of Texas and getting them to behave themselves and letting Texas A&M out to go to the SEC if that's what they're really wanting to do. (It is.) After that, I'm really hoping he gets aggressive about getting the Big 12 back to 12 again. I could really care less, but I hope that these rumors about Louisville and West Virgina are just that: rumors. Just because the Big East did the weird thing and added TCU doesn't mean the Big 12 needs to play that game. Media markets are what's driving this, to be sure, but academics, geographic footprints and to some degree history and tradition need to play a part too. Does a school really 'fit' into any given conference? Personally, I'd like to see the Big 12 go after some combination of BYU, Air Force/Colorado State and Boise State to the West or TCU (apparently Baylor has some beef with them so I'm not sure this will happen- plus they did just join the Big East), Houston/SMU and Memphis on the East. (Memphis because FedEx, the T Boone Pickens of that school has pretty much said they'd pay to get them into a BCS conference, so the Big 12 might as well oblige them.)
Either way- once Neinas stablizes the place and manacles it together he needs to get aggressive about expansion- to me, that's the best way to stablize the conference.
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