First off, this option does not include Yewtah. I personally don't want them in the BIG12, but if they do end up in the conference it is what it is.

Here is what I think the BIG12 could do.

Make a pitch to Washington and Oregon and say that we will bring along WSU and OSU if it helps so they have a travel partner (etc).
Make a pitch for the Arizona Schools as well, for the same reason as a travel partner. (this also makes sense geographically for the conference).

I know that would put the conference at 18 schools and might muddy the waters financially a bit. But this would shore up a pretty strong conference top to bottom (would match closer to the BIG10 than SEC in parity of high-end Football and low-end bottom feeders). This would also, IMO, make the BIG12 the best basketball conference in the country. This would also pretty much solidify it as the 3rd best conference and hopefully prevent this attempt at 2 super conferences.

You then break the conference up into 3 divisions of 6 teams each. You play the 5 in your division every year with 2 teams rotated from each of the other divisions yearly. This would still allow for 3 non-conference games on the schedule (4 if you have Hawaii on there every so often).

Break up the divisions like this:

BIG12 West
Arizona
Arizona State
Oregon
Oregon State
Washington
Washington State

BIG12 North
BYU
Cincinnati
Iowa State
Kansas
Kansas State
West Virginia

BIG12 South
Baylor
TCU
Texas Tech
Houston
UCF
OK State

This allows for the PAC12 teams to be in a division and continue to play one another. It allows for the Texas teams to be together along with OK State and UCF. I am not loving the division for BYU, but it would be a good division and would allow a solid chance for BYU to come out of it with good records year in and year out.

You then have a conference Championship between the two teams with the best conference records overall as each team would play 9 conference games each year.

NOTE: The best part in all of this, Yewtah gets left out and has the knowledge for all time that they were passed over by OSU and WSU. 🙂