When it comes to expansion, best option for K-State is a healthy Big 12

On the never settled topic of Big 12 expansion, most of the talk is from fans, media, Oklahoma president David Boren and conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby.

Voices rarely heard belong to those with the greatest stakes, Big 12 schools whose options would be less desirable if the conference was weakened by departures or ceased to exist.

Like Kansas State, which is why a good chunk of athletic director John Currie’s meeting with reporters Monday was devoted to his view of the expansion through a purple-tinted lens.

What’s best for K-State? The answer is simple: Whatever it takes to keep the Big 12 a fully functional member of a Power Five conference.

Whether it’s adding schools by a pair or more and playing a football championship game — the preference of Wildcats’ football coach Bill Snyder — or standing pat in the current structure of 10 teams with the round-robin scheduling in football and basketball, Kansas State can live with both options.

There are 29 million reasons for this. That’s amount of the check Kansas State is expected to receive from the Big 12 and NCAA — mostly from media contracts, bowl game and NCAA Tournament revenue — more than 41 percent of the year’s $70 million athletic budget.

That is the budget of a Power Five school, one that is plugged into the Big 12’s multi-billion media contract. In 2014-15, the revenue drop to most Division I programs without those contracts was by tens of millions. For instance, according to USA Today research, Memphis of the American Athletic Conference produced $43 million in athletic revenue that school year.

So no surprise that Currie, when asked to state his preferences on the issues of expansion, football title game and a conference network, would make any diplomat proud with his response: “I’m for whatever outcome collectively strengthens the conference.”

What Currie doesn’t see is a conference in dysfunction, as the Big 12 has been portrayed over the past few months. Make no mistake, the impression has been largely shaped by Boren’s comments, especially his “psychologically disadvantaged” description of the league, which doesn’t have a TV network or title game.

And Currie has seen dysfunction; he was greeted with it in fact. On his second day on the job in 2009, Currie attended the Big 12 meetings in Colorado, stoked for his first duty as an athletic boss. He left shaking his head.

“I said, “Whoa, wait a second here,’” Currie said.

A year later, the Big 12 lost its first members, Nebraska and Colorado. A year after that, Missouri and Texas A&M departed and the conference was in full scramble mode. There were moments in those summers when the Big 12 appeared on the verge of collapse.

That’s not the case now, so the comments from Oklahoma and Texas suggest. Beyond that, the grant of rights remains a financial tie that binds Big 12 schools through the length of the media deals that run through 2024-25.

That timetable means the Big 12, while always thinking about its future in the media landscape, likely will begin to take steps on any new deal in three or four years.

Wouldn’t that be a more logical period for the Big 12 to consider changing its shape and structure, if the expansion options are outside the Power Five?

That would give the Big 12 more time to evaluate its position with the College Football Playoff, a motivation for expansion. It also would provide more years to attempt to sell the idea that playing a full round-robin schedule plus a mandatory non-league game against a Power Five opponent makes the Big 12 football champion as worthy as any other champion from a conference that plays a league title game.

Currie said Monday his choice would be to remain at 10 for now. If the Big 12 split into divisions, K-State could lose annual football games and Kansas basketball could lose home-and-aways against Texas and Oklahoma.

The league lost brand value from the departures five years ago, but it has gained competitive and marketplace value from playing everybody once in football and twice in hoops.

But whatever the Big 12 decides, Kansas State will nod its approval, as long as there is a Big 12.

This story was originally published May 17, 2016 at 11:43 AM with the headline "When it comes to expansion, best option for K-State is a healthy Big 12."