FWST: As Big 12 officials embrace expansion talk, here are our top 10 candidates

After downplaying the issue at the Big 12 spring meetings, league presidents made expansion a hot topic during Tuesday’s final day of the league’s football media days in Dallas.

League administrators said commissioner Bob Bowlsby will sound out expansion candidates ASAP and suggested the league could have a 12- or 14-member configuration by the time the Big 12 resumes its football championship game in the 2017 season. A huge driving force is the lure of additional TV revenues from the Big 12’s existing media partners (ESPN, Fox) that require carriers to pay the league on a pro rata basis if the Big 12 adds additional members while newcomers could join the league without receiving full financial shares (similar to phase-in deals given to TCU and West Virginia when they joined the league for the 2012-13 school year).

That means an expansion windfall for the league’s 10 existing members, coupled with a boost in revenues for teams currently in non-Power 5 leagues that seek to join the Big 12.

Oklahoma president David Boren, chairman of the league’s board of directors, outlined a set of criteria that will be used in vetting candidates that includes: athletics success, fan base, TV following, academic standards, integrity and shared values with existing Big 12 members. In practical terms, that gives us this top-10 ranking of candidates from the likely “free agents” interested in becoming Big 12 members: