The giant Big 12 expansion timeline, from 2010 to now

The American Athletic Conference, by all rights, had an outstanding football season. UCF went undefeated for the second season in a row and will have a great chance to beat LSU in the Fiesta Bowl. Cincinnati posted on its best seasons in years, Tulane made a bowl game for just the second time since 2003, and Memphis, Houston, USF, and Temple all made bowl games as well.

Sports Business Journal reported Monday ($) that the league’s schools are considering installing a grant of rights along with the AAC’s next TV deal. A grant of rights involves schools signing over their rights to their own TV money to the conference for a set term, making it effectively impossible for universities to leave for another league.

The Big 12 decided before the 2016 football season that it wouldn’t expand — for the time being — beyond 10 teams. There’s been little chatter over the last year about the league growing. Sometime down the line, it’ll come up again.

When it does, two schools discussed will probably be UCF and USF. The two Interstate 4 rivals were among 17 universities to make pitches around the summer of 2016, when Big 12 expansion talk was at its latest zenith. USF made quiet approaches, while UCF emphasized video game supremacy.

While the Big 12 went through a will-it-or-won’t-it dance last summer over expanding beyond 10 teams (and ultimately didn’t), the conference discussed a “scheduling alliance” with the Pac-12, according to a report by CBS’ Dennis Dodd.

“The discussions focused on a scheduling agreement between the two conferences to bolster each league’s non-conference schedules in the College Football Playoff era,” the report says, citing “multiple sources.” But the Big 12’s commissioner, Bob Bowlsby, pours some water on the idea in the same piece.

That wacky Big 12 is at it again.

Hypothetically, on the last weekend of the regular season, Team X could play Team Y atop the division standings in essentially a meaningless game (which isn’t a stretch, because of the back-loaded nature of the conference’s typical slate) then turn around and play an actual conference championship game the next week with actual stakes.

The Big Ten didn’t extend invitations to Rutgers and Maryland in 2012 because it valued their academics. They needed to lay claim to the New York and Washington/Baltimore television markets so that The Big Ten Network could continue to grow in households and revenue.

There is no Big 12 Network. Per the league itself, it’s probably not possible, and there’s the matter of the Longhorn Network. So, when schools like Cincinnati, USF, and UCF pitched new market exposure, or when Houston built its campaign around retaking that city’s TV market from the SEC, there was no conference network executive to fan those flames.

The Big 12 announced Monday that it’s not gonna expand after all. This has renewed much angst over the conference’s immediate and long-term future, some of it reasonable and some of it classifiable as mere hollerin’.

Pollard also said he understands the mockery of the Big 12’s public process, said the only tangible difference between ISU and many of the candidates who didn’t make the cut is Power 5 membership, and confirmed no votes on expansion were actually taken by presidents, meaning the conference’s messaging on the decision being unanimous is a little fuzzy.

Here’s an internal Big 12 memo obtained by ESPN’s Brett McMurphy, who reports the memo instructed league members to describe the conference’s decision to not expand as being unanimous, whether it was or wasn’t.

The memo lists some Dos. Let us focus on the Don’ts.

And it made sense in its own way. The conference elected to once again hold a title game despite already playing a perfect round robin. It was a money grab half-disguised as a way to give its champion a better shot at the College Football Playoff (good luck with that).

With Texas unlikely to approve of any scenario that involved ditching its Longhorn Network, it didn’t appear a Big 12 Network would have traction. In its absence, there was no need to expand beyond 10 teams. After all, if you can split conference title game proceeds 10 ways instead of 12, that’s more money.

“Ten is the right number” of teams, University of Texas president Greg Fenves said in a statement on Monday’s no-expansion decision by the Big 12.

Elsewhere in the state, the governor shared a Fox Sports article calling for the conference to apologize after having all these schools publicly plead for membership, then not even voting on any of them:

Expansion was inevitable ... until it wasn’t.

The Big 12 announced in July that it was going to explore candidates and evaluate resumes, with expansion by two or four teams looking like a certainty.

Given the unpredictable history of the Big 12 and its stilted relationship with expansion, expect any outcome Monday afternoon after the league’s school presidents meet. A presser with commissioner Bob Bowlsby and Oklahoma president David Boren is scheduled to stream live at Big12Sports.com at 6:30 p.m. ET.

SB Nation can confirm that multiple schools long considered to be expansion candidates have prepared messaging and marketing campaigns for four distinct scenarios. While there’s no clear leader for what will happen, here are the four outcomes the schools who could join the league are prepping for.

Oklahoma president David Boren, who has been been quite outspoken for years about the possibility of the Big 12 expanding, is now reportedly leaning against expansion.

A couple weeks later, Sports Illustrated reported ESPN and Fox might succeed at putting a stop to Big 12 expansion:

If the Big 12 decides to expand beyond 10 members, San Diego State isn’t going to be included. The Aztecs were reportedly cut from consideration more than a month ago, and they were always a long shot. But there’s no reason not to shoot your shot.

SDSU was formally working on Big 12 administrators from at least late July, with a pitch that centered on their California geography and football and basketball success. SDSU’s pitch didn’t work, but the argument it put forward had some legitimate points.

The Big 12 is allegedly getting closer to making a decision on whether to expand beyond 10 teams. If it does, former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer just made the bluntest case possible for keeping Houston out of the club.

Switzer thinks Houston joining the Big 12 would “make it tougher on Oklahoma, without a doubt,” and went into some depth on why he doesn’t think OU should want the Cougars in the conference.

The Lieutenant Governor of Texas is back and he’s got more takes about what the conference should do in this super fun cycle of possible expansion. But this time, he’s actually right?

This is a poorly crafted ether, but it is an ether nonetheless. It’s a dad joke-style ether and those are their own category.

As the Big 12 plods through another round of expansion talks, one of the conference’s options is to get bigger in a half-baked way.

It isn’t likely, per se, but Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby signaled in the summer that his league is open to adding schools only in football. That would give new members a one-sport ticket to the Big 12, with other sports staying in their current leagues.

CINCINNATI — Twelve days into the season, Houston has twice enjoyed nationally televised wins while the Big 12 mulls expansion, beating Oklahoma, 33-23, in Week 1 and fellow expansion candidate Cincinnati, 40-16, Thursday night.

The Big 12 is in the process of interviewing schools in person and has already met with presumed frontrunners Cincinnati and Houston, according to multiple sources. SB Nation can confirm candidates have not been officially informed of a decision date by the league, but that multiple universities expect to know if expansion is occurring and if they’re included by mid-October.

The Big 12 is going to add roughly two teams, with football looming as one huge factor among several. “Football” means overall football quality, including history, recruiting, revenue, potential, reputations, and so forth.

On some level, the 2016 season could factor into that part of the decision. It might sway confidence levels or alter the conference’s messaging. But it probably will not decide the process.

1. Houston is one of six or eight or 11 or 13 teams still in the running to be added to the Big 12 Conference. The Cougars are widely expected to be one of the final three or so, considering they already have the potential support of conference kingpin Texas.

2. The biggest argument against adding UH is pretty simple, and has been made by multiple Big 12 coaches: it’d make recruiting a lot harder for everybody already in the conference. There are good cases for other schools, such as BYU having a larger fanbase and Cincinnati adding new territory and so forth. Maybe other schools would add more money or turf or whatever. Sure.

The hubbub surrounding Big 12 expansion has died down now that the season is only days away. Last we left the conference, they not only decided they were going to entertain expanding, but they build up an impressively long list of expansion candidates. The list even included teams that had no idea they were being considered, but that’s in the past now that the conference has whittled its list of candidate schools down to “six or eight” schools, according to CBS4’s Jim Benemann.

First, we know some of the schools that did not make the cut. East Carolina, despite their enthusiastic efforts, will not be joining the Big 12, and neither will UNLV, New Mexico, or San Diego State.

East Carolina, which made public its desire to join the Big 12 through a series of tweets in July, is out of contention as a league expansion candidate. ESPN’s Brett McMurphy reported on Wednesday that the Big 12 informed the Pirates they wouldn’t be joining the conference.

The league’s been considering as many as 17 candidates, although just a few figure to have any real chance. The Pirates were among the most public of dreamers when word broke in July about the Big 12’s desire to get bigger.

Well more than a dozen schools are pitching the Big 12 for membership. We’ve gotten looks at what a few of those pitches look like, including Cincinnati’s straightforward case, Colorado State’s pamphlet partly on being not that far away, Boise State’s Obama co-signs, Memphis’ ribs, and UCF’s very specific academics shots at Cincinnati and UConn.

USF’s now up to bat, and here we go. Things are looking fine. Always good to show off the book-smarts at your disposal. Academics will only be one part of the puzzle, but you’ve got to put your best foot forward there.

The Big 12 can’t stop talking about expansion. We’ve been making jokes about this since the last round of realignment was popping back in 2010, and we’re still here waiting for the Big 12 to do something.

It hired a research firm to say the conference would have a very slightly better chance to make the Playoff with 12 teams and a title game, which has spurred it to ... well, keep talking and not actually do anything yet.

As the Big 12 rolls toward a decision on whether to expand beyond 10 members – first reportedly within a month or so, but now maybe not until October – the league has no shortage of options.

For the Big 12 to add a new member, eight of 10 schools need to approve it. The league has stated it’s considering expansion by either two or four teams, but it’s difficult to say how the league will vote. It may well vote not to expand at all.

Now that the Big 12 has announced it’ll start considering expansion proposals, there will be a lot of candidates. Big 12 expansion represents perhaps the last chance in the near future for a team in the Group of Five to leap into a lucrative deal and have a reliable Playoff path.

About a half-dozen programs get mentioned as Big 12 candidates, but nobody really jumps out as a runaway favorite (other than BYU and, if Texas is being sincere, Houston). Because of that, an awful lot of schools are making it known that they’d like to be considered.