"Let’s face it, membership in the Big 12 is tough on Mountaineer fans that want to see their team outside of home games. Adding Cincinnati would be a terrific help to Gee, athletic director Shane Lyons and WVU.
There are many other expansion candidates out there, but let’s examine a few. First, Houston sounds sexy these days, yet the Big 12 gains nothing by adding the Cougars. The league already owns Texas. BYU and Salt Lake City is over 1,000 miles just from Texas. Colorado State is, well, Colorado State.
And then there are the schools located more toward WVU. The last thing the Big 12 needs is more schools in the Southwest or in the Rocky Mountains. If Boren and the others in the league truly want to be more of a national conference, a la the Big Ten, they need to look at markets like New York (Connecticut) or Orlando (Central Florida). Memphis would be a nice fit geographically and would help WVU as well.
Yet let’s move to Boren’s other desire: a Big 12 network. If the league wants to start such a network it would have to do so in what one television insider called “the least cabled environment” among the conferences. The old Big East was wired with cities like Baltimore, Washington, New York, Philadelphia, etc. The Big 12 would be helped by moving into, say, New York via Connecticut. The Huskies, according to the insider, draw more television numbers, at least in basketball, than Rutgers for the Big Ten.
You might think it would be impossible to talk Texas into ditching the Longhorn Network. It just screams “stumbling block.” That, though, is not the case. The Longhorn Network has never worked. It’s lost money from Day 1. ESPN would give it back tomorrow. Those in the know say dissolution of that could be negotiated in a day. The Big 12 would simply cover the money Texas would earn within the Big 12 Network structure.
So the “comprehensive plan” Boren has proposed isn’t far-fetched at all. In fact, it could help not only the league but WVU. The Mountaineers could have travel partners. Their fans could get to more games. The Big 12 could become more of a national brand. And a Big 12 Network could be more wired to more homes.
Sounds like a win, win, win, win to me."