Big 12 Reportedly Has Met with Multiple Schools Regarding Possible Expansion

Officials from the universities of Houston, Memphis, Central Florida and Colorado State have reportedly been been "lobbying members of the Big 12's composition committee, according to documents ESPN.com has obtained," per Jake Trotter of ESPN.com.  

Oklahoma president David Boren "has pushed Big 12 expansion back into the limelight, repeatedly calling the league 'psychologically disadvantaged' without 12 teams, a championship game and a conference network," according to Trotter.

But it has been West Virginia president Gordon Gee—one of three members of the Big 12's composition committee—who has reportedly been most active in speaking to potential new member schools.

According to Trotter, Gee traveled to Houston last November to meet with school officials, while other schools have sent Gee and the composition committee brochures or letters promoting their inclusion in the conference. 

Expansion is hardly inevitable, however. 

In fact, Boren's desire for conference expansion isn't matched by several powerful figures at his own school. Max Weitzenhoffer, the chairman of the university's board of regents, told Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports in an interview published Monday that he would attempt to convince Boren to disregard expansion.

"I can tell you I'm not alone," Weitzenhoffer said of his desire to not expand, citing Oklahoma City Thunder chairman Clay Bennett—one of the seven members of the school's board of regents—who is also against expansion.

Weitzenhoffer added:

"

[The board of regents] will have a lot of input [on Oklahoma's view of expansion]. The problems is, the reason I got so bent out of shape on this is we're coming to that crunch time and they're all trying to decide what to do. We think all these Big 12 presidents can do this thing without going through boards of regents. We're not sure about Texas. The fact is we just want to make sure he [Boren] understands where we are. I don't want to speak for all of us. We're going to force the president to tell us where we stand.

"

Weitzenhoffer revealed to Dodd that, along with Boren at Oklahoma and Gee at West Virginia, he believes at least Kansas and Iowa State are also keen to expand, while Texas has remained coy on where it stands.

The Texas vote is an important one, because as Ben Smith of News9.com reported, "Texas Tech and TCU will follow Texas’ lead" in an expansion vote. Because a 75 percent majority (eight schools) must approve of expansion for it to take place, it will be difficult for expansion to pass without Texas' support.

In other words, Big 12 expansion is very, very far away from being a sure thing at this point.

You can follow Timothy Rapp on Twitter.