The wild card to me in this is Fox. I’m guessing they had some money earmarked for half the Big12 rights to get OU & UT on Big Noon Kickoff (& content for noon EST FS1). That time slot they split between Big12 & BigTen. Now they only have BigTen. They’re partners with the BigTen & have a chunk of the PAC-12 deal. I don’t really see their motivation in paying the BigTen more to add PAC-12 teams they already have deals with that don’t help with the Big Noon Kickoff problem.
The BigTen isn’t going to let them turn that into an exclusively BigTen window. Does Fox push the PAC to add central time zone teams to fill that slot, overpay a rebuilt Big12 to help fill that spot, or abandon the Big Noon Kickoff branding? I have a hard time seeing them abandoning the time slot since they own it. I could also see in a new BigTen deal with Fox the BigTen pushing a limit to the number of times a team can be selected for it so it doesn’t become “Big Noon Ohio State Kickoff.”
Also, does Fox see value in Baylor, TCU & WVU? If 4 Big12 teams go PAC, that means Fox has to go strike a deal with the AAC (or where ever they land)or potentially lose a couple game’s worth of slots per weekend. I don’t think anyone is doing any moves until Fox decides what they want to pay for & how. The more I think about it, the next move will be decided by Fox. They may see this as an opportunity to get UCF, Houston, Cincy & whoever else in the Big12 (without the rest of the AAC) while still having 3 conferences worth of teams in conference races in November for their inventory.