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Next you’ll say there’s no Easter Bunny

June 25, 2015 by Mike Casazza

This is the time of the year when there are no games and when players and coaches retreat into the background of meeting rooms and workouts and occasional vacations. The lights and the ink instead go to administrators and decision-makers, and this is how mole hills grow (See: Big 12’s sportsmanship initiative). So what you get is a lot of meetings and a lot of commissioners and presidents/chancellors and athletic directors touring or speaking or both. Suddenly Shane Lyons is advocating for Big 12 expansion, though he never really said that.

“There’s a presidential committee that’s kind of looking at that as well, but as athletic directors, we try to look at the bigger picture of what actual teams and partners we could bring in that would add value to the conference and that’s still being explored,” Lyons said.

“I’m in favor of expansion if it’s the right two teams to bring in,” he continued. “Obviously for us, it would be nice to have more of an eastern partner, but at the same time, I want to make sure it’s the right partner and from a revenue standpoint it doesn’t impact us negatively as well by bringing additional partners in.”

See what happens? I mean, do you see what happens? (Seriously, one of them says WVU will lead the charge!) Well, yesterday was another day, and this time Oklahoma president David Boren, who loves to talk, said he’d like to see the Big 12 expand in the interest of “living up to our name,” which is maybe the worst reason to expand.

There are good-to-great reasons to expand. Name integrity is not one of them. Anyhow, Boren’s a bright guy with a profile, and surely he knew his words would start a conversation. Before long, we were all dusting off our expansion/realignment texts and poring over the reasons to and not to do it.

Every time, though, it came back to the money, because it always comes back to the money. Boren was ready to counter that, optimistically, if not without attention to detail.

The conference has been careful about expanding back to 12 since, using its television revenue stream as the primary motive for holding at 10. Just last month, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby announced league members would share $252 million in revenue from the 2014-15 athletics calendar.

Boren, though, believes that kind of money can be made with 12 members.

“If you pick the right partners, it’s not a stretch at all to think that the pie’s going to grow even more because of the right partners — media markets, fan base, other factors you have to consider,” he said. “We would be better off financially and I think we’ll certainly be better off in terms of our survival, in terms of our being one of the five big conferences in terms of equal treatment with the playoff system.”

True. Also utopian. Pick the right partners and schools can make back the money they cede when they welcome in two more members. But those two partners have to be, like, Notre Dame and Louisville or something like that. Not Cincinnati and UConn. Not SMU and UCF. Why? Because of math.

Take the entire cash cache and divide it by 10 for distribution. It’s Figure X. Now take the cash cache and divide it by 12 for distribution. It’s Figure Y, and Figure Y < Figure X.

This has been your, my and every other pundit’s go-to explanation for why expansion is oh so unlikely. The 10 teams are not going to look the other way on, say, $7 million a year — and rapidly rising — for name integrity. That seems more true now than ever because yesterday was the day the NCAA’s football oversight panel voted to degregulate conference championship games and pass it along for comment. That’s tantamount to formality, which means the Big 12, before long, will indeed be able to conduct its own title game even though it doesn’t have 12 teams because that 12-team requirement will no longer be a requirement.

But something amazing came to the surface yesterday when all of this was happening, and it’s a tremendously big deal we would not know about unless we were in this season and folks like Boren were taking to talking.

Boren said the problem of reduced revenue per school with expansion wasn’t as big of a hurdle as it had been made out to be.

“The contract says that our main television contract … if we grow from 10 to 11 or 11 to 12, their payments to us grow proportionally,” Boren said. “So everybody’s share stays the same. If it’s ‘X’ dollars, it stays ‘X’ dollars.

“Our main media contract says it’s not the same pie now cut 12 ways instead of 10.”

Boren did say that that only includes the primary television contract, not other revenue that is split between the schools.

Wow. Translation: Figure Y = Figure X. Adding teams won’t reduce payouts. If the Big 12 adds teams, the television contracts grow proportionately and schools would make no less, and maybe a little more, than they do under the 10-team terms. I had to read that a few times and then hang around the Internet for a while until someone answered my questions.

Wow, again. The NCAA revenue varies because it’s based largely on NCAA tournament performance and bowl games, but you’re dividing by 12 instead of 10, so there is a dent. The CFP revenue is $50 million, so you’re asking teams to take about $4.2 million instead of $5 million. This is why Boren believes you can make up the money. Add some teams that make bowls and advance in the tournament and that $8000,000-plus comes back in revenue.

But the biggest roll of cash doesn’t thin. That’s mammoth, and that’s something that the Big 12 had not sought to clear up through the years, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why, unless the Big 12 wanted to keep that secret. Really, with that cat out of the bag, how much more momentum will this conversation gain, especially right now, when there aren’t many other distractions?