The committee (Boren, Gee & previously Starr) had worked with the consultants and presented in May. They had some more questions for the consultants but came out of the May meeting stating that conference expansion was now in the hands of the commissioner for him to come back with the additional information from the consultants and a proposal.

At this meeting they revealed that they voted to expand unanimously and the commissioner will now listen to any schools that were interested. This is not a new committee...

What wasn't actually said but what is assumed is that they are only doing a song and dance of having candidate schools openly reach to them so that when they pick teams they can point out in arbitration of buy outs that the B12 did not pursue those teams but those teams pursued the B12.

Further there is rumor that the unanimous vote may have been something that included teams #11 & 12 and those have not been announced because they want the commissioner to have as much additional candidate evaluation as possible and since candidates don't know if it really is 2 or 4 to be added some will maybe provide really low ball attempts to get in to the conference (meaning more money for current B12 teams).

And IF there is a done deal (or deal in principle) the B12 will still certainly want to make sure that the media and general public will be supportive of the additions so having BYU/Tom Holmoe out promoting the value of the school or the ease of working with the conference it will make it all more acceptable and considered worthy if an invite does come.

Some basic PR/marketing, legal protections/CYA, negotiating (with teams and public perception) going on across the board.