Utah announced it was leaving for the PAC 10 in June 2010 after Texas, OU, OK state and Texas Tech were all staying. If what the article says is true, then there wouldn’t have been stability issues with the Big 12. Do you remember when you heard that?
I think the only way the timing works was if it looked like the Big 12 was about to fall apart and BYU didn’t want to risk being left holding the bag. Sounds more like the Big East than the big 12.