College Football Expansion: TCU to Big 12 and Dominoes Start to Fall Again

TCU trustees are scheduled to meet today to discuss the Big 12’s invitation to join the conference. According to sources, the Horned Frogs will accept the invitation.

If this is the case, expect conference realignment to once again take over the college football world and for the next set of dominoes to fall.

With both Oklahoma and Texas on board the Big 12’s new revenue sharing deal, the Big 12 has officially saved itself and now the conference in the most trouble is the Big East and that isn’t even close.

Pittsburgh and Syracuse will join the ACC as soon as possible, Connecticut wants no part of the conference, neither does West Virginia, and TCU is about to leave. The basketball powerhouse has absolutely no clout whatsoever when it comes to football anymore.

There is a small chance the conference can stay together with its automatic qualifying status if it can snag a team like Boise State, but by all reports, the Big East officials have done next to nothing to hold the conference together. Plus, Boise makes absolutely no sense from a geographic standpoint, but that didn’t stop it from adding TCU.

The biggest question is whether Missouri will stay in the Big 12. All signs point to no.

In last week’s revenue sharing meeting, the Tigers abstained from the vote on the advice of legal counsel. This can realistically mean one thing: They don’t want to get sued for possibly meddling in the conference’s affairs after being in talks with another conference, i.e. the SEC.

Should Missouri leave, the Big 12 will need to fill at least one more spot and that would likely come from the Big East. From reports, it seems as though Louisville would be the next target because of the new market it brings.

It may turn out that BYU or Boise State gets added instead of the Cardinals, but it would be foolish for the conference to remain at just 10 teams when every other major player now has at least 12. At some point in the future, the Big 12 will take at least one team from the Big East other than TCU, and you can bet that that team will be a football power with a new television market.

Simply put, there is no way the conference could survive getting poached for another team.

Nothing is official yet, but all signs point towards a Big 12 with at least TCU and a Big East on the verge of collapse.