A person can not bring up the college football playoff without mentioning the Big 12. A Cincinnati fan can’t look at twitter without seeing a thousand Big 12 expansion rumors. The Sporting News unleashed a report the league met with Cincinnati yesterday. The Big 12 didn’t have a championship game, it seemed like they were punished for not having a championship game, they would need teams to add a championship game if they couldn’t get a waiver. Meanwhile, Cincinnati is sitting here, chillin in the AAC as one of the more premier programs left out of expansion. There seems to be a match in the making. Especially since one would assume that the Big 12 would give West Virginia a travel partner if they expanded.
The keywords in all of this are ‘if they expand.’ There are cases for why the league should expand, there are cases against it. There are rumors swirling that they have talked about expansion and that it’s coming in the form of Cincinnati and Memphis, or BYU, or Northern Illinois or one of the Florida schools. The one constant in all of the rumors are the Cincinnati Bearcats. That’s a great, great thing for Cincinnati. Putting in the work on Nippert Stadium has paid off. Saying the right things about upgrading the basketball arena and hopefully upgrading more of the facilities for other sports will make Cincinnati a very sweet choice.
It goes without saying that I 100% want Cincinnati to join the Big 12. How anyone with a rooting interest for old Cincinnati could not want the Bearcats to play with the biggest and best (suck up) in the nation is beyond me. There is a weird argument I’ve seen on twitter where some people say ‘Would you rather be the top team of the American or a middling team in the Big 12?’ I don’t see the logic in this really at all. Sure, you can win the college basketball national championship from the American. UConn just did it. But that AAC last season had one of the best teams in the country and it also was severely screwed by the selection committee. One of the biggest snubs was a team from the AAC. The league champions were a 4 and 5 seed respectively. That seems to be the highest plane for the league unless there is a truly transcendent team. The strength of the AAC is name programs at the top. Once you got past the top 5, there was 1 team with a winning record and that was 17-16 Houston. The league looks worse this season. I would rather play Kansas than Central Florida.
Basketball doesn’t matter in conference expansion though. This is all about football. If the Big 12 had any basketball problems, they wouldn’t be looking to expand. Football is the name of the game and the game in Big 12 country is sitting on the outside looking in. Cincinnati’s football has had a pretty good run since 2006 to put it mildly. The league could absolutely use another good team as a boost to it’s conference. The AAC is not a good league. It has a worse problem than AAC basketball because the depth of high quality teams only goes 2-3 deep. The remaining 8 or so are not good. The only access to a major bowl game for the league has to be fought for with 5 other leagues. There is no stand out bowl game for the league if that doesn’t happen. The team that drew the best match-up was Memphis against BYU. The sexiest is ECU against Florida. And Florida sucked this year. Who wouldn’t want out?
There are plenty of money reasons why the Big 12 should expand. They lost a lot of money, 22 million according to some, from not being in the playoff and the subsequent fallout from that. That stings. Money for the championship game, along with it’s sponsors, would be another boost to the league. Money and a 13th game are gigantic reasons to expand. Especially when the 13th game was a boon to the Big 12 as mentioned.
There are reasons against expansion as well. It kind of seems like an overreaction to a one year problem. I really can’t see Oklahoma or Texas not getting a bid in the playoff if they were Baylor or TCU. The fact Baylor and TCU were left out for a program like Ohio State shouldn’t be shocking to anyone. There is no cache behind either. It’s not fair, but life isn’t fair. It’s not hard to vision a scenario where a Big 12 team like Memphis, Cincinnati, Iowa State is left outside of the playoff for a Big 12 or Pac 12 school either. Sports are a TV show.
Some of the Big 12’s issue came down to non-conference scheduling. One would imagine that the league would mandate tougher ooc scheduling like the ACC and other leagues have. You can’t let non-conference schedules be a hindrance. It was a problem this year, but will it be a problem next year? Who’s to say.
I want the expansion to happen very badly. We all do. I’ve tried so hard not to buy in to every rumor until something tangible was laid out at our feet. We have reports the Big 12 met with Cincinnati. We don’t know what they met about. That seems to give off the impression that Cincinnati would move if there was movement. My stance has been to not buy anything until someone you’ve heard of is reporting expansion. So far no one has reported expansion is a go. My only advice is to try and stay level because things like this can change quickly. I don’t think I have to tell anyone that with the conference realignment and coaching rumors it seems like we’ve all dealt with the last 5 years.
What’s encouraging is that there is a catalyst. There is a reason for change. There hasn’t been reason for expansion that includes Cincinnati for a while. Now there is. Now there is a chance for Cincinnati to break free from the shackles of a so-so league and hit the big time. Now there is a chance for the Bearcats to prove themselves to the nation. Now there is a chance for the program to shoot for the stars. A chance is all we need. I can’t imagine the school getting a chance to move to the Big 12 and not getting invited.
The dam of a power 5 league has wobbled. All we can do are hold our breaths and watch to see if it falls. Waiting is the hardest part.
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