Report: Memphis Proposes Massive Offer to Join Big 12

Memphis is trying to break free of the American, and its apparently ready to spend some major money to do so.

Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger reported Monday that Memphis prepared an offer “expected to be as high as $200 million over the next five years” to join the Big 12, but for now, that proposition isn’t believed to have the necessary support. In a follow-up report, On3’s Brett McMurphy wrote that the number is $250 million and added that the Big 12 was “not interested.” Either way, it’s a large chunk of cheddar.

The money would come through sponsorships to the Big 12 via University of Memphis-affiliated corporate partners, according to Dellenger. Dellenger mentioned that Memphis is aligned with titans like FedEx, Lowe’s and AutoZone.

To get to this point, Memphis president Bill Hardgrave has spent the past 14 months visiting with presidents and athletic administrations from many Big 12 schools. It would take support from 12 of 16 Big 12 presidents/chancellors for Memphis to be admitted to the conference.

Memphis shared a copy of the proposal with Big 12 administrators across the past few days, according to Dellenger. It includes that Memphis would take zero distribution for the final five years of the league’s TV contract with ESPN and FOX and subject itself to league expulsion after the 2030-31 school year if the Big 12 deemed Memphis wasn’t adding value. In short, the Tigers really, really want to jump up to a power conference.

The Big 12 took from the American a few years back, adding UCF, Houston and Cincinnati to the league following OU-Texit. They also added BYU in that round of expansion and later added Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah from the Pac-12 to get up to 16.

This is probably not the ideal day for the American to have a school offering hundreds of millions of dollars to leave the conference, as the league announced earlier in the day that it is updating its branding and is no longer the American Athletic Conference but just the American Conference. Capitalism happens fast.

Memphis has been in the American since 2013, with the Tiger football team making 10 bowl games (winning five) during that span. They’ve been ranked in the AP Poll in six seasons since 2014. Memphis has gone 21-5 on the gridiron across the past two seasons. The Memphis basketball team, coached by Penny Hardaway, has won at least 20 games for the past eight seasons and has made the NCAA Tournament three times in the past four years.