Report: Five Big 12 schools explored collective Big Ten move in 2010
The Omaha World-Herald reported Sunday that when Texas flirted with the Pac-10 in 2010, five Big 12 schools made preliminary inquiries into a possible move to the Big Ten.
By
Jerry Hinnen
•
1 min read
How close did the Big Ten come to becoming the Big 16 in 2010?
Not very close at all. But the Omaha World-Herald cited an unnamed Big 12 athletic director in reporting Sunday that it might have been more of a possibility (i.e. a far distant one, rather than a completely nonexistent one) than previously believed.
Per World-Herald writer Lee Barfknecht, during Texas's famous 2010 flirtation with the then-Pac-10, officials at five Big 12 teams -- Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa State, Texas A&M and Kansas -- made contact with administrators at various Big Ten schools to gauge the possibility of all five moving en masse to Jim Delany's league.
Was this a concrete proposal for realignment? No.
But it was much, much more than cocktail-napkin speculation.
A Big 12 athletic director, who spoke to The World-Herald on condition of anonymity, said he contacted Big Ten athletic directors and presidents with whom he was familiar in June 2010.
The topic: Was the Big Ten, which had 11 members at the time, interested in adding five Big 12 schools?
The feedback from Big Ten school officials was positive, both sources said. The sticking point was devising a revenue-sharing plan to satisfy all. It would have taken at least three to four years for that many incoming schools to hit the financial payoffs sought for moving.
Barfknecht goes on to reiterate a previous report that the Big Ten has done its "homework" on potentially adding Oklahoma and Kansas.
But all of this is almost certainly water under the expansion bridge at this point; Nebraska and Texas A&M found their escape routes, the Big 12 as a whole isn't going anywhere until Oklahoma and Texas decide they're splitting up*, and the Big Ten isn't going to add more far-flung schools when a long-term future built on cable TV revenues looks ... interesting.
Things were different in 2010, of course, and you never say never where expansion is concerned. (If you'd asked us about the likelihood of the Big Ten adding Maryland and Rutgers at any point until the Big Ten actually added Maryland and Rutgers, we'd have scoffed as hard as it's possible to scoff.) But the guess here is that this is more interesting historical tidbit than any cause to think the Big Ten is still considering a raid of the Big 12.
