Big 12 Decides Not to Expand

On Monday the presidents of the Big 12 and commissioner Bob Bowlsby met in Dallas and it appeared that a decision was going to be made about the seemingly never-ending expansion saga. Well, a decision certainly was made, just not the one the Cincinnati Bearcats (or the UConn Huskies, BYU Cougars, Houston Cougras and others) wanted to hear.

Cincinnati was considered a front-runner for one of the rumored openings in the conference and has been along for the whole roller coaster ride of this last summer when Big 12 expansion was a sure thing, then seemed over only to be reinvigorated once again. Despite being in consideration until the end as far as we all know, UC simply did not make the cut and will now have to tuck tail and return to the American Athletic Conference after openly petitioning to join another league. I guess UC can take solace in the fact that it wasn’t rejected in favor of some other candidate.

Of course this doesn’t mean Big 12 expansion is dead and buried. Its just on hold for now. So we won’t throw #Big12Confirmed out the window just yet. We’ll just put it in the closet next to our throwback Kenyon Martin jerseys.