Following the exclusion of both Baylor and TCU from the inaugural College Football Playoff, the Big 12 has been taking a long look in the mirror to try and figure out how it can prevent such a fiasco from ever happening again.
Conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby’s decision to promote the Bears and Horned Frogs as co-champions totally backfired, and several athletic directors are upset by the Big 12’s lack of a conference championship game. The NCAA requires a conference to have 12 teams in order to host a championship game, but the Big 12 has applied a waiver in the hopes of getting an exception granted.
If the NCAA denies its waiver, we may very well see the conference try to expand to 12 teams once again, in which case Cincinnati would be a likely contender to join the Big 12.
According to Mike DeCourcy of Sporting News, the Big 12 had been looking at potentially expanding even before being snubbed from the College Football Playoff.
Included in DeCourcy’s article was this excerpt on Cincinnati:
“Big 12 officials recently met with administrators from the University of Cincinnati, a source close to the university told Sporting News. That is not an indication membership will be offered to the Bearcats in the immediate future — only that they would be a candidate were such an expansion to be undertaken.”
If the Big 12 was truly looking to expand even before the events that transpired last Monday, then it will certainly be strongly considering it now. And if the Big 12 will be adding a couple of teams, it looks like there’s a strong chance that Cincinnati would be one of them.
The Bearcats would seem to make perfect sense, as they were highly competitive in the Big East when it was an AQ conference during the BCS era. Under Brian Kelly, Cincinnati won a pair of outright Big East titles and appeared in BCS bowl games in 2008 and 2009. Over the last nine seasons, the Bearcats have won 10 or more games on five different occasions and have finished with a losing record just once.
Cincinnati is currently coached by Tommy Tuberville, who had his fair share of success at a Power Five conference during his time at Auburn, and the Bearcats have a strong supporting base and play in a sizable media market. Add in the fact that their men’s basketball team has made the NCAA tournament in each of the past four seasons, and it seems like Cincinnati would be a prime candidate for inclusion in the Big 12.
Of course, this is far from a done deal and we have to wait and see if the Big 12 even decides to expand, but it seems likely that it will. If the conference does indeed decide to add a couple more schools, don’t be surprised if one of them in Cincinnati.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
