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Message: [QUOTE="jostar1, post: 1848743, member: 1737"] [B][SIZE=5]The Big 12 owes a lot of people an apology[/SIZE] [SIZE=4]The league made a mockery of conference expansion By Stewart Mandel Oct 17, 2016 at 7:35p ET [/SIZE][/B] [SIZE=4]Conference realignment’s strangest saga yet came to an [URL='http://www.foxsports.com/college-football/story/big-12-will-not-expand-fox-espn-conference-tv-101716']anticlimactic end Monday in Dallas[/URL]. For that, the Big 12 owes a whole lot of people an apology. It should apologize to the leaders at BYU, Houston and Cincinnati for dangling a coveted Power 5 golden ticket and inspiring them to publicly grovel for it. It should apologize to fans of Connecticut, UCF, USF and Colorado State for giving them months of false hope. It should apologize to administrators at SMU, Tulane, Air Force and Rice for putting time and effort into delivering needless presentations last month for invitations the league surely knew were never coming. And it should apologize to American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco for treating it as a farm league team where the star players could get called up at any moment. The Big 12 was never under any obligation to expand, so it’s not like it made a right or wrong call Monday when it “unanimously” elected to remain at 10 members. But imagine being a supporter of one of the supposed finalists when board chairman David Boren said at a press conference Monday that he and his colleagues did not even discuss individual candidates at their meeting. The weakest of the Power 5 conferences spent the past 18 months standing in judgment of all those purportedly inferior programs. The 10-team league hadn’t added new members since 2012 because it didn’t think any of the available candidates were attractive enough. And after compelling presidents and ADs of those schools to desperately court its favor, the conference came to the conclusion that … nope, still not good enough. More at: [URL="http://www.foxsports.com/college-football/story/big-12-expansion-conference-should-apologize-oklahoma-texas-mandel-101716"]The Big 12 owes a lot of people an apology[/URL] [/SIZE] [/QUOTE]

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