So the Big 12 Conference has done an about face and decided that it will indeed expand.
Expansion talk seemed dead in the water back in May after the market dictated there was no interest in a Big 12 television network. Things changed dramatically last week when the Atlantic Coast Conference announced that it had partnered with ESPN to form a cable network that would begin broadcasting in 2019.
The Big 12 suddenly realized it needed to do something significant or risk getting left behind.
On July 19, the Big 12 Board of Directors voted unanimously to allow commissioner Bob Bowlsby to explore models for adding two to four teams as early as the 2017-2018 academic year.