What will the Big 12 Conference look like this time next year?

I recently wrote about a meeting of BCS conference officials during which the topic of expansion was definitely going to be in the air, if not on the agenda. Here's what several people have told me was discussed at that meeting, particularly as it pertains to the Big 12 Conference.

Expect the conference to lose three schools -- Colorado, Nebraska and Missouri -- possibly as early as before the start of the 2011 football season. Colorado (and Utah) will go to the PAC 10 Conference and the other two will join Rutgers as new additions to the Big 10 Conference, by far the wealthiest in all the land.

The Big 12 has already positioned itself to add two teams -- BYU and TCU -- to the conference. The question becomes one of balance. All three of the departing teams play in the Big 12 North. BYU, of course, would go to the North and even though TCU football coach Gary Patterson would dearly love to be in the north, that is simply not going to happen. So that leaves the Big 12 with four teams in the north and seven in the south. Problems. The only solution I can see is to shove the two Oklahoma schools into the north, leaving the split at 6 and 5. That, however, also presents a situation many will find utterly distasteful. The south schools play the north schools in football twice every four years, meaning, if that schedule is maintained, the annual Texas-OU game is history. Of course, the schedule makers could ensure that Texas and Oklahoma meet in the first two years of the new alignment and, after that, I believe the Cotton Bowl contract on the game has expired so there would be no legal obligation to have the two teams meet annually, only a traditional one.

The other problem with this alignment, a problem that affects all 11 teams in the newly formed league, is the fact that the NCAA requires a conference to have at least 12 members before it can stage one of those lucrative conference championship football games (one of the main reasons the Big 10 and PAC 10 are expanding). So a 12th school will need to be added, but who that team is going to be is anyone's guess. In order to maintain the geographical parity, it would seem that it would have to be another Texas school, so I would argue that either the University of Texas-El Paso or, even more likely, the University of Houston would seem the logical choices, with UH having an edge because of the rich potential television market in Houston and the wealth of potential recruits throughout Southeast Texas.

I could also present the argument (although I have found no one willling to join me on this) to convert the Big 12 conference into the Big 14. Make TCU the seventh team in the south and in the north add Air Force, BYU, Colorado State and Wyoming. Of course, that makes the conference even more bottom heavy, talentwise, but that can change as well over time.