Chip Brown of Rivals.com reports that the Pac-10 is set extend invitations to six Big 12 schools - Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech - which would create the first 16-team BCS conference.
The new conference would be broken down into an East-West divisional alignment, with the old Pac-8 on one side opposite the remnants of the Big 12 plus Arizona and Arizona State.
Accompanying the latest expansion rumor is word that the new conference would create its own television network that could command BTN like dollars. A conference TV network that would be available in 7 of the country's 20 largest television markets could bring in upwards of $20 million per school. This plan also presupposes that the Big 12 will cease to exist as a conference, leaving Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska, Iowa State and Baylor homeless and at the mercy of Jim Delany and Mike Slive.
It's unclear whether all six invitees would be interested in joining the Pac 10, but the incentives are powerful if faced with the possible extinction of their current athletic conference.
Why should you care? Where this will get interesting is if this move by the Pac-10 elicits an equal and opposite reaction from the Big Ten and SEC. If the SEC feels threatened enough to try to keep pace with Pac 10, the conference could start to eye members of the ACC (especially with Texas and A&M off the table).
This rumor seems a bit more credible considering the source and the fact that this plan actually makes some sense. Stay tuned.