This is your open thread for anything involving conference realignment for today. Here's the latest news.
Things are moving quickly toward at least Oklahoma and Oklahoma State entering the conference.
Pac-12 officials tells AP vote by presidents on whether to expand expected by end of week.
Pac-12 source on presidents vote this week: "Larry (Scott) wouldn't call a vote if he didn't know the outcome beforehand."
It could also mean that Scott thinks everyone will reject it, but it's not likely he'd be dumb enough to call for a conference quorum if he didn't believe he had the votes. Scott has been set on a sixteen team super conference since he became Pac-12 commissioner, and it looks like he's almost there. Cal might be a little worried about Oklahoma academics, but it's not likely to be a stumbling block to admission.
Texas might take longer. I discuss why at Pacific Takes.
The Longhorns have a lot of work to do though if they plan on negotiating themselves (and likely Texas Tech along with them) to a Pac-16. They need to reduce the scope of the Longhorn Network, and by reduce I mean "find the exhaust vent to dump proton torpedoes through to blow to a million pieces". They need to agree to equal revenue sharing, something they have tried their best to evade at every juncture. The Pac-12 is hardballing Texas, and they aren't going to let up on those issues until they're all in or out.
Oklahoma thus tried to strong-arm the Longhorns to stay in the Big 12. Their demands for Texas sounded pretty familiar (and fairly unreasonable).
The other reform the Sooners demand is Texas and ESPN retreating on some its plans for the Longhorn Network. The UT/ESPN partnership angered Big 12 members on two counts: 1) the network reached an agreement with Fox Sports to move a conference game to the Longhorn Network; and 2) The Longhorn Network announced it would show high school highlights even after the conference voted to keep televised high school games off school-branded networks.
Either Texas is going to concede a lot of the things they would have conceded in a Pac-16 to Oklahoma to stay in a watered-down Big 12, or it looks like we're going to have some new members soon. It's just a matter of who will end up joining them.