According to Horns Digest’s Chip Brown the Big 12 will not expand and the Big 12 will not have any sort of Big 12 network:

The bottom line is there is no consensus on any non-Power Five candidates to add.

And the league’s primary TV partners – ESPN and Fox – aren’t exactly knocking down doors right now to start a conference network with the current 10 schools, the sources told HD.

Combine that with the varied third-tier media rights agreements across the league – most with years still left on them, and it’s a lot of contracts that would have to be rewritten or broken. Again, for what?

This reads more like an editorial more than anything else as Brown walks through the past decade or so regarding the Big 12 and realignment. Brown even goes so far as to say that TAMU was leaving, regardless of the Big 12 network, which I don’t know if I believe or not, but whatever.

Either way, this was the likely scenario with Big 12 expansion, which is nothing. No real candiates, no network. Although I don’t know if I agree with much of anything that Bob Bowlsby says, I do believe he was being truthful when he said that the Big 12 will be disadvantaged in comparison to the other Power Five conferences:

“If we do nothing,” Bowlsby said at the Big 12’s meetings earlier this month, “we will be substantially behind a decade from now.”

This was never more true than right now as CBS Sports Jon Solomon totals what each conference member of the Power Five are to receive and the Big 12 is last among the Power Five teams, although $31 million of the revenue for the ACC is from the exit fee paid by Maryland:

Each conference’s approximate 2014-15 payouts per school:

SEC $32.7 million

Big Ten $32.4 million

ACC $27 million

Pac-12 $25.1 million

Big 12 $23.3 million.

It should also be noted that Bob Bowlsby is the lowest paid commissioner, at $2.6 million, although to be fair, the Big Ten’s Jim Delaney also makes $2.6 million and the ACC’s John Swofford makes $2.7 million.