1. Baylor has a REALLY strong rivalry with TCU and is very close to Houston. I want some bad blood and intensive three-way rivalries in each pod, so keeping them together is an important factor to me.  New schools (BYU included) don't get to be as choosy about who they are paired with.

2. Right now, easily the two best established teams in the Big12 are Baylor and Oklahoma St. The 4 newcomers have had a few good seasons in the last decade, but those two have been the most consistently good and have done it at the P5 level. So I don't want to start them Oklahoma St and Baylor off in the same pod.  Those two are also the highest drawing teams so putting them in the same pod seems to be a bad choice.  

The one potential alternative would be (as someone else mentioned) shifting a few teams around

West: BYU, Oklahoma St, Texas Tech, TCU
South: Baylor, Houston, TCU, UCF
North: Iowa St, Kansas, Kansas St, Oklahoma St
East: Cincy, UCF, WVU, Iowa St

which would work and would also give us the weakest pod (which has positives and negatives)

I don't like it as much because the Kansas/Kansas St/Iowa pairing and the Baylor/Houston/TCU pairing are such good fits for heated rivalries.

As another plus (though one that most here won't like....) if the Big 12 does further expand, the pods as initially outlined are a great fit to add the most-commonly suggested teams without requiring a huge overhaul

West: BYU, Oklahoma St, Texas Tech, +Boise
South: Baylor, Houston, TCU, +SMU
North: Iowa St, Kansas, Kansas St, +Memphis
East: Cincy, UCF, WVU, +USF

In that eventuality you'd go to an 8 game schedule and you'd play your own pod every year with the other 3 pods rotating through 3 roles - paired (where you play all the teams in that division), Game8 (where you play your conference game 8 against the matched seed) and off (where you don't play them that season unless it's in the CCG).