Big 12 Football: Bob Bowlsby Wise to Gauge Realignment Before Acting Too Fast

Yesterday, after DeLoss Dodds spoke out about Florida State and Big 12 expansion, we reminded people that new commissioner, Bob Bowlsby, was truly needed in the conference. Now, just a day later, Bowlsby is making his presence felt as he declined to comment on FSU but did speak to the expansion race as a whole. Bowlsby understands that realignment and shifting of the conference landscape is going to be a legitimate concern:

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"I think the topic of expansion will be on every agenda going forward. But it's on every other conference's agenda going forward, too."

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However, the man who has been the athletic director at Stanford since 2006 also understands the uncharted waters that he is currently wading into in the Big 12. Florida State is pressing the issue but wisely, Bowlsby is trying to buy some time before his new conference acts.

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"My opinion," he told USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday, "is college athletics would be well served by some period of smooth water and not all of the angst and disorganization that goes with moves from one league to another."

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The man is proving his worth here. Proving why he was the right guy for the job as he is prudent in his actions and makes quite the statement with respect to needing a little calm on the landscape.

Make no mistake, Bowlsby is not making a play to the nostalgic college football fan who wishes all of the realignment should stop. No, Bowlsby is doing his job when it comes to assessing the pressing needs of his new league.

As a league the Big 12 has undergone reconstruction two seasons in a row. Losing Nebraska and Colorado after 2010 was a tremendous blow that saw the league re-make itself into a ten team conference that was able to survive. After 2011 the league lost Texas A&M and Missouri, while gaining TCU and West Virginia as replacements.

The conference needs a break.

Not a break as in a respite. No, a break as in a chance to take a step back and assess their current position. The Big 12 has never operated with TCU and West Virginia. While on the field people are expecting both TCU and WVU to make things work relatively seamlessly, expansion is about viewership and bottom lines.

Bowlsby, and the conference, needs some time to figure out their current valuation and if they truly need to add teams in order to improve their standing in the conference pecking order. As Bowlsby puts it:

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"It's all about driving value for the member institutions," Bowlsby said. "There is a case to be made for optimal value being driven by the status quo, and there is a case to be made for some form of expansion. And I'm not prejudging or adopting either side of that right now."

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He's making the smart play here by not appealing to pause expansion for the sake of pausing it. The conference needs time to look at what it has, what will benefit it the most in the long run and then it can make the next move.

The Big 12 needs to see how much real value, in terms of eyeballs and on-field productions, the Horned Frogs and Mountaineers bring to the league.

With the new postseason coming, will it behoove them to add an additional game? Is their league better served getting the cash from the championship game or giving their teams a better playoff shot in order to rake in the big payday?

Big questions like that warrant a pause. Bolwsby is most certainly on top of his game.