I'm agreeing with you on the point the Big 12 doesn't need to be grabbing a bunch of G5s like you mentioned. I think they only one of the last four that brought much to the "viewership" table was BYU...and only then because of the size of the LDS church. Houston damn sure doesn't bring those numbers and I doubt Cincy will unless they have seasons like they did a couple of years ago. Same for UCF. Even if they are in Florida and huge enrollment wise, they don't draw the eyeballs necessary to get the media to throw more money into the deal. Just like Houston didn't add any more eyeballs to the conference that TCU, Baylor and Tech didn't already have.
I think where we disagree is in adding the four corner P5 schools. While they might bring more eyeballs than BYU, Cincy, UCF and Houston does, they still aren't an "anchor" store that would bring the amount necessary to replace the ones Texas and OU took with them to the SEC. Even collectively the four doesn't bring what the two took.
Let's play this out and say they even went to 16 and included the four corner schools.
Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, TCU, Baylor, Texas Tech, West Virginia, BYU, UCF, Houston, Cincy, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah. Tell me which one of those ALONE do you think would command 4 million+ viewers in games? All of them MIGHT if they had late season success like TCU did last year. But I'm talking just run of the mill normal viewership. They just aren't going to bring the television money with them by themselves. (The B1G and SEC wouldn't either if they didn't have their "anchors.")
I'm not even talking about quality football or basketball. Collectively, that list is a very good group and might have the most parity of any conference. Be fun to watch. Heck, the case could be made that group would be just as good or better than the Big 2 in the middle and bottom.
