There's no doubt having Kirby Holcutt leading the expansion committee SHOULD help CSU at least get a fair shot and serious look from the committee.

One of the biggest question marks right now is, when will OU and Texas leave? Because that determines a lot. I don't think the Big12 can make any final decisions on expansion until OU and Texas provide an exit date.

BYU just extended their tv contract with ESPN in 2020 for another 7 years. What role does ESPN have in BYU moving to the Big12? Would they want that? I agree if BYU joins that gives CSU a better shot at getting into the conference. I also agree Cinci is a no-brainer and should be the #1 option right now.

On the revenue sharing part, under your scenario, AAC schools would only get a $500,000 bump in tv revenue (they make about $7M each right now). Is a school like Cincinnati really going to leave the AAC for a tiny increase in tv revenue? Of course the plan would be to increase their share to the approx. $15M eventually, but there's also a lot of risk leaving the AAC and joining a Big12 conference that could totally fall apart by 2025. The Pac12 or other conference could still decide to expand in 3-4 years and we'll go through all of this again. For a MWC school like CSU who's making a little under $4M, the risk is probably worth it, but AAC schools might need to make a little more than $7.5M to make them feel comfortable.

Predicting what is going to happen from here is impossible, but my opinion is they need to at least get back to 12 teams, which means they add 4 and plan to have those new additions join whenever OU and Texas officially depart. Adding Cinci, Memphis, BYU, and CSU would be awesome, but my opinion is biased and I'm not sure we provide enough value. UCF and Houston are probably going to bring more money into the conference long-term, but UCF creates another island problem and I'm not sure if the Texas schools would vote for Houston. I've also read that the Big12 had an unpleasant experience with the UH board chairman, Tilman Fertitta, during the 2016 expansion talks. On a side note, adding SMU brings nothing to the conference. Their fan support isn't great and the Big12 is already in the Dallas-Fort Worth market with TCU. It would be like the Pac12 adding CSU. It just doesn't make sense for them to do so. There are also several other schools that could steal a spot from CSU - Tulane, USF, SDSU, UNLV, Boise. I think we stack up pretty well against most of those, but it's hard to say what the committee is going to prioritize.