To be sure, money is obviously important. If some wild merger with the Pac-12 to form some sort of Pac-18 or Pac-20 is on the table and would assure that everyone can still earn $35 million per year or something similar in media revenue, then that trumps everything else. But those numbers probably won't check out. If a majority of the Big 12's remaining programs are left to choose between, for instance, joining an expanded Pac-12 for slightly more money or remaining in a Big 12 and adding some AAC programs and/or independents to the mix — for this example, we'll say some combination of Cincinnati, BYU, UCF, Memphis, Houston, SMU and maybe the Mountain West's Boise State — the latter should be taken seriously for a few different reasons.

1. As things currently stand, the Big 12 still has Autonomy Five designation and could hold on to that by simply adding more teams.

2. If the proposed 12-team CFP indeed continues to give top seeds to conference champions only, a champion of this Big 12 would have excellent odds of regularly earning playoff byes.

3. Travel costs would be cut immensely. That will obviously have to be taken into consideration even if a Pac-18 would result in more incoming revenue.

4. Adding Cincinnati, BYU, Memphis and maybe others to a conference with perhaps Oklahoma State, Iowa State, TCU, etc.? Are you kidding me? This conference would be fun as heck!(edited) That's not to say that we wouldn't get some fun Oklahoma State-Oregon matchups or something with a Pac-12 merger, but this new Big 12 would have a football identity, tight and meaningful conference races and quite a bit of quality. Last year's conference race, for instance, could have featured teams ranked seventh (BYU), eighth (Cincinnati), 11th (Iowa State) and 23rd (Oklahoma State) in SP+.

It would be a pretty ruthless basketball conference, too, especially if Houston were involved.

This expanded Big 12 would be the most watchable conference in football — a Sun Belt for the power conference level. That doesn't matter as much as cold, hard cash does, but it means more than we realize in our more cynical moments.

Between name, image and likeness rules, a potential playoff expansion and this, the landscape of college football has shifted more in three months than it ever has before, for better and/or worse.