The new B12 is going to get paid mostly based on projected football TV viewership. (Basketball matters a little bit, and revenue from post-season appearances.) They won't get a conference network. Boise draws TV ratings better than all but BYU among the G5's and independents available.

Colorado State is the most overrated school in expansion talk, because they do not draw well on TV, even when balancing out their playing mostly on little watched CBSSN. Like Arizona and some other states, half of Colorado is from somewhere else, so they tend to stick with their prior schools. Colorado's tv ratings are also bad, even as they, not CSU, pick up most of the t-shirts fans from the new arrivals.

Every time I read someone say add Colorado State it's like reading someone saying the Pac12 should take BYU or Baylor. Highly unlikely, for reasons. (That's not a putdown, we're fans and don't get paid to know all the ins and outs of realignment. It just means keep digging on the research.)

It's true that Boise and Memphis were eliminated early in the prior B12 expansion exploration, but obviously the parameters and risks were different then. Probably eliminated for academic fit reasons, and also for Boise perhaps distance and lower athlete recruiting/acceptance standards.

San Diego St was also an early elimination, probably for distance. But TV will have a bigger say this time around. Except for distance/time zone, looking at the numbers San Diego St is a better candidate than Memphis, both in football and basketball, and more than twice the market size. They could be a dark horse candidate.

Boise and BYU are only 1 hour off from most of the B12 schools, so travel wouldn't be quite the negative that it was for the Pac16 proposal. SD State is 2 hours, but it would probably be the only school in the Pacific zone. There's also the possibility of football only membership, or scheduling their home games (non-football) earlier than normal. Same for BYU and Boise.

USF has benefits, but not sure that will overcome their lousy athletic performance in the last decade. I agree that SMU is too small and would be an unlikely addition. TCU, Tech, Baylor, and Oklahoma State are enough for DFW. But Houston might be a good add for TV and political reasons. They won't carry Houston like Texas or aTm, but the standards are different for this B12 expansion. It all depends on what the TV partners say.

4 Texas schools would mean every other conference school gets a game in Texas each year. Good for their recruiting. So if one of Tech, TCU, or Baylor isn't scared of Houston hurting their recruiting, they might get enough votes. I think Houston is probably the fifth most likely add, depending on how the B12 schools end up viewing Boise as acceptable now or not. As far as TV money goes, I bet it ends up ranking:

1. BYU
2. Boise
3. UCF
4. Houston
5. Cincinnati
6. San Diego St
7. Memphis
8. USF (maybe 7th or 6th, based on their market being as big as San Diego's, growing faster, and the spillover/synergy of Tampa and Orlando being about as close together as Austin and San Antonio)

I'd bet good money the B12 ends up adding 4 to 6 from that list, and no one else.

This post was edited on 8/27/21 at 4:40 pm