Sooner or later, and not necessarily with prompting, I figured Rich Rodriguez would speak up about conference expansion. Who, outside of a presidential office or A.D. lair, would have insight like his in this particular matter?

Once part of the Big East that was raided and later perhaps the greatest beneficiary of the reconfiguration, The Product is again in the center of the expansion.

He’s at a — formerly the— marquee football institution in the Big Ten + ?, which is about to make a football-driven decision to increase membership. Likely to join are more than one school from a conference P-Rod once called home.

Well, the growing conference is conducting its annual meetings in Chicago this week and the football coaches, how have separate meetings before their media day later in the summer, are on hand  … and for obvious reasons.

Rodriguez had a lot to talk about Monday, but he was, at last, asked about his experiences with expansion.

“There’s a lot of schools of value in the Big East, and some have been mentioned [as expansion candidates],” Rodriguez said. “When the three schools left, there were questions on worthiness from a BCS bid standpoint and all that, and you could understand from a coaching standpoint why the public was saying that. We said we’ve got to prove ourselves in nonconference games and in bowl games.

“Fortunately, the league had some big wins and helped us quell some of that.”