"We're panicking and overwhelmed and need to add teams immediately. Frankly we're desperate"

That might be the truth, but if the conference wants to keep existing it needs to project strength and confidence. Ideally he'd say something like

"We're very confident in the teams that want to be in this conference and believe we have several strong paths forward. Expansion is only one of those and while we'll certainly consider it, we're not going to take on additional teams just to add numbers. We've always been open to adding additional members if it makes sense culturally, on the field and financially and that hasn't changed"...
...
Which is pretty close to what he said