The chancellors and presidents from the 8 continuing schools have made Big 12 expansion official by unanimously voting to accept BYU and 3 members of the Athletic American Conference (Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston) to the conference. As mentioned previously, these 4 schools were the heavy favorites to be accepted as new members to the conference. However, there were a few other schools deserving of consideration for membership.
SMU:
Located in Dallas, the Big 12 could have officially established Dallas as their major TV market. However, TCU is Fort Worth, which still gives the Big 12 a DFW presence. And while the annual SMU-TCU match up would have been a bit more meaningful as conference rivals, the fact that SMU is a small, private school whose athletic programs have shown to be fairly inconsistent makes SMU more of an interesting secondary option than a must-have.
Memphis:
Home to FedEx, the Liberty Bowl, Beale Street, B.B. King, and Graceland, Memphis brings a different attraction to the conference. Despite this and solid football and basketball programs, Memphis did not receive much traction in the first wave of expansion talking 2016. Since then, they have made improvements to modernizing their football facilities, including a new indoor practice facility and much needed upgrades to Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium. The Laurie-Walton Family Basketball Center, opened in 2017, also brought much needed practice facility upgrades to the basketball program looking to capture some past success with Penny Hardaway as head coach.
South Florida:
Situated in Tampa, bringing USF into the fold doubles down on the Florida market and it would give UCF at natural in-conference rival. The USF football program has had its hills and valleys from 2010-2019. The lows were never as low as 2015 UCF, but the highs were never quite as high either. Unfortunately for USF football, they picked a bad time to be stuck in one of those valleys. From 2018-2020, the program has gone 12-22, not exactly a great selling point. While the academic standing is on the rise, the football facilities are lacking. Despite the lack of on-campus stadium, the commitment to upgrading the football facilities is in progress.
Tulane:
Concerning academics, Tulane is by far ranked higher than any of the remaining 8 schools in the conference. As with SMU, Tulane is a small private school in a big city. With its location being in New Orleans, an entire new TV market comes into play as well as the state of Louisiana becoming a solid Big 12 recruiting hub. From an athletics perspective, it's been a struggle point. Despite bowl appearances in the last 3 seasons, Tulane has only played in a total of 5 since the turn of the century.
Colorado State:
With the loss of Colorado to the Pac-12 after the 2010 season, the Big 12 lost its connection to the Denver TV market, ranked #16 in the country. The addition of Colorado State bring that market back into play. From an academics standpoint, Colorado State has made great strides in research and development, placing it well on par with the rest of the Big 12. Canvas Stadium, opened in 2017, replaced an aging Hughes stadium. With a current seating capacity of 36,000, Canvas Stadium is smaller than every stadium in the Big 12. However, the bigger problem has been with filling the stadium with fans on game day. As the Colorado State football program has been floundering since a 10-win season in 2014, attendance has also been on the decline, bottoming out at under 13,000 for the season home finale in 2019. The basketball program hasn't been immune to attendance woes either. The Moby Arena, small in stature as it is with a seating capacity of less than 9,000, struggles to reach 50% in home attendance more often than not.
Now that the Big 12 has achieved its feat with expansion, it's time for the AAC to figure out which way that they want to go in order to replenish the conference, one that has been knocking on the door of Power 5 autonomy for the last 3 years.
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