...great basketball tradition. While the Jayhawks are desperate to find a landing spot, they would have to leave in-state rival Kansas State, a potential political problem.

Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and either Kansas or Texas A&M would join Colorado, Arizona and Arizona State in an eight-team eastern division designed to reduce travel issues. Scott also plans a Pac-10 TV network that could help generate $20 million per team per year."

To answer your question, Kansas didn't get the invite because Texas and OK backed out because TAMU wanted to save the Big12. Texas, OK and TAMU worked out an arrangement where they each got a larger share of the TV revenue than the rest of the conference.

Kansas is a bad football school but so what, so is Colorado, they hadn't been good for 10 yrs prior to the invite. Kansas had been better recently than Colorado and had won the Orange Bowl just a couple years prior and finished with a #7 ranking. According to Ute fans winning a BCS bowl is the all-important requirement to get invited, not having a rich history of success, so there you go. Kansas was worthy and they brought a legacy basketball program that would've significantly enhanced the Pac12.

So in essence Utah was actually Plan C. When Plan A fell apart it blew up Plan B and left the Pac12 scrambling to find somebody to pair with the team they were now stuck with (Colorado). Their gambit in using Colorado to start the dominoes tumbling in the Big 12 failed and they had to find someone. Fortunately for them there was this school out west that was desperately letting it be known in the national media that they'd be willing to do anything to join the Pac10, so....Plan C it was.