Even if the Big 12 did not want to turn its expansion process into a season of The Bachelor, it has. Yesterday, East Carolina officially announced that it was informed of its expulsion from the Big 12 expansion race.
The Pirates weren’t the only ones.
News broke that UNLV, New Mexico and San Diego State were all left without a rose as well.
But in the grand scheme of things, we are still a long ways off from a final decision being made. (Stop me if that sounds familiar). At least 11 and as many as 13 teams are still alive, with BYU, Colorado State and Air Force (as football only) still kicking along with basically the entire American Athletic Conference, including Cincinnati.
Big 12 cuts expansion list to at least 12: AF, BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, CSU, UConn, UH, Rice, USF, SMU, Temple & Tulane sources told @ESPN
— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) September 1, 2016
According to ESPN’s Brett McMurphy, the next step will include in-person presentations to Big 12 officials from representatives from each program still in the running. Or a group date, whatever the producers decide.
McMurphy also shed light on when a decision may come, saying that the league wants to have it wrapped up by Oct. 17, the date of the Big 12’s board of directors meeting. Of course, we’ve heard that the Big 12 would like to have this process finished by a certain date before. In fact, they reportedly wanted to have a decision made by today, the start of the college football season. Clearly that didn’t happen, so its tough to take the claim that the Big 12 wants to actually make up its mind by mid-October seriously. For all we know, this glacial-paced event won’t finish until the calendar turns over or later.
All we do know is that UC got a rose this week and that #Big12Confirmed is still alive.