Big 12 exploring alliance with ACC, two other leagues
The Big 12 is actively exploring a possible alliance with the Atlantic Coast Conference and two other unspecified leagues for purposes of scheduling and marketing and possibly even television partnerships in a move that could preclude those leagues from further expansion.
“We’ve had conversations with three other leagues,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told the American-Statesman on Friday afternoon. “The ACC is one of them. It’s a process of discovery that would provide some of the benefits of larger membership without actually adding members.”
Bowlsby declined to name the other two leagues, but the Pac-12 Conference is presumed to be one of them because that 12-team league is landlocked with the Big 12 to its east, which makes Pac-12 expansion with like major-college institutions more geographically prohibitive.
Bowlsby said the topic would probably be discussed during the two-day meetings of the Big 12 athletic directors that begin Monday in Grapevine but stressed that “certainly nothing is imminent” about a potential alliance.
Continued at http://www.statesman.com/news/sports/big-12-exploring-alliance-with-acc-two-other-leagu/nT7Bt/ .
Cross-posted in the Sports Group at http://www.democraticunderground.com/120426389 .
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