This time Dodd is right--they could do anything or nothing. Guess you or I could have written that column.
Commentary certainly covers the whole spectrum and at this point it's wait and see what happens this evening. Do they kick the can down the road yet again? Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
I think a tweet from Andy Katz from ESPN pretty interesting:
A number of Big 12 athletic directors and coaches said they are in the dark this am about expansion. This is a president-level call. News conference later today from Dallas.
(10-17-2016 07:28 AM)FloridaJag Wrote: I place two $1.00 bets on Houston and Cincinnati to get the invites from the Big 12.
BYU will not get an invite for religious and political reasons. SMU or Rice will get an invite before BYU.
Colorado State is a long shot but would make sense.
UCF, USF, and UCONN are way out of the footprint. Tulane....is just Tulane.
Excuse me? Really. You must implying we're a lock.
Nope, Tulane does not fit in the picture.
Cincinatti, Colorado State, Houston, and Memphis get invites.
Big 12 East
Cincinnati
Houston
Iowa State
Kansas
Kansas State
Memphis
West Virginia
Big 12 West
Baylor
Colorado State
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Texas
Texas Christian
Texas Tech
Rice or SMU would get the nod before Tulane. In fact, I would place Boise State in the mix as a possibility as well. Boise would be selected before Tulane.
@dennisdoddcbs 3m3 minutes ago Kansas City, MO
Told Bob Bowlsby will be calling expansion candidates between 4 and 5 CT with decision on whatever conference decides
Quote:They include an expert in plant science, a former key contributor to the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center and a former chair of a department of mathematics and statistics. They include the former highest-ranking U.S. military officer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former U.S. senator (and Oklahoma governor before that) and a man who has been president of five universities. They include a former “Professor of Christian Scriptures,” a former practicing lawyer and a university president who still teaches a freshman class at the TCU College of Education.
They include a woman, Kansas Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, who spent 38 years in various key positions at the University of North Carolina, including chairing the psychology department.
The 10 university presidents of the Big 12 Conference, with their various degrees from places ranging from Yale to Cornell to Saint Louis University to Utah to the University of California at Berkeley and back to Oklahoma Baptist, will spend Monday together near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport addressing a topic some will consider their loudest: whether the conference will expand, or whether it will expand in football only, or whether it will not expand at all. Two of the presidents — the former Christian Scriptures professor, David Garland of Baylor, and the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers of Kansas State — are interim.
They will meet with the backdrop of what has become the key quotation, University of Oklahoma President David Boren’s assessment to the OU Daily in June 2015 that the league was “psychologically disadvantaged” because of size. Among the country’s biggest five conferences, three have 14 members, one has 12 and the Big 12 has 10. That number arguably has caused it some constraints since the 10 settled in 2012 when Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas A&M exited, then TCU and West Virginia joined.
Guessing that Sparks quote is taken way out of context. Would love to see the whole thing.
e.g. "If the Big 12 selects the 'wrong' schools ... then expansion is probably harmful to the future of the conference."
And as far as Dodd's tweet, I can only imagine some of those calls might be like this later today:
"Hey! It's Bob. Yeah ... yeah .... yeah, it's been a long day here. Say ... well, what can I say? You know this group ... they can't even agree on what to order for lunch! .... Yeah, I know! ... Trust me, I told them everything. .... Yep ... yep ... I told them. I tried! Lord knows, I tried! ..... yep .... so, we're gonna have to set this thing down, and try to pick up again at the next board meeting .... I know! ...... Alright, good talking to you. We'll be in touch, take care. *click*"
(This post was last modified: 10-17-2016 10:33 AM by MplsBison.)
I was surprised that the comments Fox Sports President Eric Shanks said about the Big 12 didn’t get more play. The college conference has been kicking around the idea of adding two or four teams, which would trigger a contract clause that would force Fox and ESPN to pay a higher rights fee.
Shanks essentially warned that any expansion could wind up being a fatal decision for the conference.
Shanks: “We don’t think expansion in the Big 12 is a good idea for the conference. We think it will be dilutive to the product in the short term. In the long term, it’s probably harmful to the future of the conference. Who knows where expansion is going to go. Reading the smoke signals, [expansion talk has] cooled off. I don’t know why. We’re still in discussions with them. We still have a long way to go in the deal. We’ll work through it the best way that we can.”
@ChuckCarltonDMN 3m3 minutes ago
One interesting bit of speculation I've heard: the longer discussions go today, probably the better for expansion. More details to work out.
And thank you Hartford. It was difficult for me to post link from my phone
I think the thing I'll be most curious to monitor is the Air Force component. As in, if they truly are one of the candidates, and no expansion is had, how they go on a short-list ahead of the two newer members with the likes of Pitt and Arkansas, to off?
These guys WANTED to do business with the fly-boys. If this doesn't go through, I am going to guess things are pretty darn bad. Even worse, if it is that way, why do all of these people have to endure this arrangement any longer at this point? Contracts are contracts, sure, but let's not beat around the bush and ignore all of the hail-mary's this conference has lobbed to even get this far, like CCG autonomy measures, and these other potential deal-altering arrangements that somehow go through without stirring the GoR and bylaw arrangements?
(This post was last modified: 10-17-2016 10:47 AM by The Cutter of Bish.)