OU Athletic Director Says Big 12 Expansion Is Dead (For Now)

This should not come as a surprise — was the Big 12 really going to add Colorado State and UConn? — but it also got buried a little bit in the July 4th festivities and that tall, lanky fellow moving to the Bay Area.

“There aren’t any signs that we’ll talk anymore about expansion for a little while,” OU AD Joe Castiglione told CBS Sports. “We don’t have a timeline on it.”

Dennis Dodd of CBS continues.

Castiglione is one of two high-placed sources to tell CBS Sports Big 12 expansion is over. The other source, who preferred to remain anonymous, said expansion was dead regarding “those teams.” That’s a reference to usual group of schools attached to the Big 12 that includes BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, Colorado State, UConn, Houston and Memphis.

This from Castiglione is sort of a more emphatic way of saying what Burns Hargis said earlier this year.

“So it’s not a simple decision,” Hargis told the Tulsa World. “On the one hand, do you do it at all? And then, two, if you do, who are you going to get? Then you get into all kinds of geography issues and brand issues and time zone issues.

“So it’s a very complicated analysis and I don’t think anybody feels an urgency to do this. I think everybody’s being very deliberate. It’s been written about, the studies, the consultants we’ve had looking at all of this. I could try to be clever and say I don’t know, but I don’t have to be clever because I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t even know, I couldn’t tell you if you had a vote tomorrow, what it would be.”

We can all agree that this is the proper move, right? OSU is already making $36M a year on its digital content distribution. And the conference could have earned more money as a whole, but almost all of that would have gone to the new teams added to the conference. CBS suggested that the Big 12 could potentially re-negotiate its contracts with ESPN and Fox for the remainder of those deals to make all teams more money.

But does anyone think that’s happening with what’s going on at ESPN? The answer to that is “um, no.” And once again Hargis nails it.

“I think [the Big 12 is] very strong,” Hargis told the Tulsa World. “We have a grant of rights through 2025, so eight more years. We have a great TV deal. This championship game is going to be a plus, not only financially, but I think it’ll give us maybe another data point that can get us into the final four.”

The Big 12 is probably going away in a decade or so, but it’s not that bad right now with how much money it is distributing and the re-introduction of the Big 12 title game (financially anyway). I’m still for OSU bailing early before the ship runs into the reef, but if this is our lot for now, there are much, much places we could be.