As it’s becoming more a question of when and not if BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston will be formally invited to join the Big 12, perhaps the conference’s biggest character was asked his thoughts about the subject of expansion on Monday.
Oklahoma State head football coach Mike Gundy certainly made the most of the opportunity to share his thoughts, according to Tulsa World reporter Eli Lederman, as he spoke for nearly six minutes.
Within the response, Gundy had this to say about BYU, according to Lederman: “Coast to coast, people see BYU as a Power Five team. That logo. You would too, right? If you see that logo, people don’t really know that they’re an independent. People think they’re tied into a Power Five conference.”
Some other tidbits from Gundy’s remarks, according to Lederman:
- Gundy said he will be taking part in a meeting on Wednesday “to get brought up to par” on what is happening in his school’s conference.
- On the Big 12 maintaining a strong presence in Texas: “I want the Texas people with us because I think it ties us into that recruiting base. Anybody that’s in here knows that’s pretty important. There’s a lot of people that play football down there and it gives us numbers to recruit to.”
- While BYU was the first of the four expansion candidates Gundy talked about, he also made comments about the other three.
— On UCF: “Central Florida has 71,000 students, and they’re in a heck of a television market. They have a recruiting base and they’ve played good football. Now, what other people may think, I don’t know. I’m just giving you my opinion on it.”
— On Cincinnati: “And then you have Cincinnati, who has a big television market. There’s a lot of people living in that part of the country, and that logo has grown in popularity in the past few years and they’re winning. Winning is important. An extended period of winning is important, I would think, to these television rights deals.”
— On Houston: “Then you have Houston that’s got a huge market and has had success. They’re tied into a place in the country that’s huge with high school football.”
- More generally, Gundy said, “There’s good candidates out there. I don’t make the decisions based on the television money. Somebody else does, but there’s good candidates.”