Conference Expansion Report: Pac-12 Close To Expanding To 16

The Austin-American Statesman is now reporting that the Pac-12 conference is moving closer to making a move to add Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, and Texas to expand to 16 teams. This morning the ACC announced that they had extended an invitation to Syracuse and Pittsburgh to take their conference to 14 teams, now it looks like that could be the first in a huge shake-up in the college football landscape that could occur as soon as this coming week. 

Statesman.com reports that sources have told them that the Pac-12 is working out semantics on inviting the four current members of the Big 12 and that conference officials may have worked out a way for Texas to maintain the Longhorn network.

The Longhorns would be able to keep all of their revenue from the network if that amount is greater than one-sixteenth of what the entire Pac-12 receives for its third-tier rights. However, if one-sixteenth of the money the Pac-12 receives from third-tier rights ends up being a larger amount, the schools would divide the revenue evenly and everybody would receive the same amount, the source said.

"Nothing has been definitively confirmed. But that's in the zip code," a source very familiar with the realignment discussions said Sunday. "This is not yet a done deal. It appears that (Pac-12 commissioner) Larry Scott is going to be able to work some magic and help Texas keep the Longhorn Network and their revenue stream."

The sources also reported that if the conference expands it is leaning towards the "pod" system which would create 4, 4-team regional pods. They would most likely be Washington, Washington St., Oregon, and Oregon St. in one. Stanford, California, UCLA, and UCLA in another. Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and Arizona St. in the third. Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma St. in the final. Each season a team would play the three in their pod as well as two each from the other three pods.

It's going to be an interesting week...