Wouldn't have mattered without the option to bail for any other major conference.
The option to bail was a factor as was the "one major player" issue with Texas but I think that the fundamental problem with the B12 was that they had and still have too much dead wood.
Fanbase size correlates very strongly with annual revenues and also with population of the state. The problem in the B12 is that they have way too many small state schools and even worse they have way too many secondary schools from small states. Even Texas has too many P5 schools. Texas has a huge population (~28 Million) but that is only slightly over double what Ohio has (~12 Million). So, in theory, Texas should be able to support two or *MAYBE* three P5 schools at the level that Ohio supports Ohio State. That covers Texas, aTm, and maybe one more but Texas has those two plus TxTech, TCU, and Baylor. If you divide Texas' ~28 Million population by their five P5 schools you get ~5.6 Million or roughly the population of Wisconsin, Colorado, and Minnesota. Then the B12 has:
- Two schools from Oklahoma: Population ~4 Million, ~2 Million per school.
- A school from West Virginia: Population ~2 Million, ~2 Million per school.
- Two schools from Kansas: Population ~3 Million, ~1.5 Million per school.
- A school from Iowa: Population ~3 Million, 1.5 Million per P5 school.
In the case of Iowa it is even worse because Iowa State is clearly secondary to Iowa.
What would have probably secured the conference would have been to create a whole new conference out of the strongest members of the old SWC and the old B8 instead of merging four Texas schools into the B8 to form the B12. When the SWC folded you had 16 teams from the SWC and B8:
- From Texas: UT, aTm, Baylor, TCU, Houston, Rice, SMU, TxTech
- From Oklahoma: OU, OkSU
- From Kansas: KU, KSU
- From Missouri: Mizzou
- From Colorado: UC
- From Nebraska: UNL
- From Iowa: ISU
The new conference should have been:
- Texas
- aTm
- Oklahoma
- Kansas
- Mizzou
- Colorado
- Nebraska
Plus a school or two to be named later. BYU would be great or one of the New Mexico or Nevada schools. Those seven would all have been able to carry their own weight.
There is probably room in Texas' population for one more P5 school but it should probably be TxTech for geographic diversity. If 12 teams was considered mandatory then they could have had those seven, TxTech, BYU New Mexico, UNLV, and maybe Air Force. The rest of the Texas schools, OkSU, KSU, and ISU are dead wood.
