Over the past year, Memphis has been building a proposal to join the Big 12 in exchange for about $200 million, mostly from sponsorship deals, Yahoo Sports reported Monday. But the power conference league isn’t interested.
The proposal to add Memphis did not even reach a vote of conference presidents, a source told Front Office Sports Monday. “It was clear relatively quickly the interest wasn’t there,” the source said.
The proposal reportedly included multiple components. Memphis would not take media rights distribution money from the Big 12’s contract with Fox and ESPN for five years. The program also promised about $150 million in sponsorships over five years. If the marriage didn’t work out, Memphis offered to leave the Big 12 at the end of the 2030-31 season.
Big 12 presidents reportedly spoke Monday about the offer, but it ultimately did not garner enough support to bring a formal vote. (Big 12 bylaws require at least 12 of 16 presidents to vote yes on expansion proposals.)
Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark has been bullish about boosting league revenue as the House v. NCAA revenue-sharing era began, prompting all D-I programs to search for more income. He’s also been working to ensure the conference can compete with the Big Ten and SEC, the two richest leagues in college sports.
He has explored everything from further expansion to private equity deals—though neither have come to fruition in the last year. Yormark did, however, sign a league-wide deal with PayPal that would earn the Big 12 about $100 million over five years.
Memphis, meanwhile, currently plays in the AAC—which announced Monday in a league rebrand that it would be renamed The American Conference. They’re likely following the lead of schools like SMU, which agreed to join the ACC without receiving any conference media rights distributions in order to earn power conference status.
Memphis has faced a tumultuous week, as two of the Tigers’ programs were placed on NCAA probation last Friday.
