Swart Dra said:
Stay at 8, try to get membership with someone later, find a few teams that don't like where they are in a few years.
There are some proud programs that are not going to like any of this, ark, neb, Colorado, and others.
If Big 12 brings in anyone, BU's days of big sports are numbered.
My understanding is that in order to really be eligible for the CFP your conference must have a championship game (this is why we have one), and by NCAA rules, your league must have at least 10 teams in order to have that game. It was 12, but they got the NCAA to let us have one with ten. They are not going to reduce that to 8 anytime soon, I would think. Besides, if you have 12 and a couple decide to leave, you still have a league. If we lose many now, we got nothing.
There is absolutely NO reason for the teams you mentioned to move to a conference where the money is likely to be significantly less. All of this is about money. Baylor's only chance to have big sports is for the Big XII to expand, and in doing so will be in a conference that actually is a league of peers, versus a league of a few bullies and the rest.
I don't know what it will take to get it through people's heads. NONE of the Big XII teams left bring enough to the table to move the needle to prod the other conferences to want to expand. It makes no sense to bring in someone that doesn't add anymore value than what most of the teams you already have add to the pie. It just makes the slices smaller. Perhaps someday the whole model will change, but that ain't today and it ain't for a while down the road.
This is not so much about Baylor or any of the other 8. You can look at the PAC, B1G, SEC, and ACC and find many schools that wouldn't move the needle either. They just happen to be in conferences that were formed before media got involved and started the arms race. They would not be invited today if they weren't already there.