At the Big 12's spring meetings held at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel on Wednesday, administrators reviewed data and discussed whether the league should expand, perhaps by six schools, in an effort to …

Wait, wait, wait. Let’s stop right there.

We’ll get to the relative wisdom of expansion, but first let’s note something that actually could explain why the most obvious solution to the Big 12’s concern about being shut out of the College Football Playoff isn’t being discussed.

The Big 12 conference is holding its spring meetings at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. Repeat: The Arizona Biltmore, opened in 1929 and long known as “The Jewel of the Desert” … for good reason.

For generations it’s been a playground for the rich and the obscenely rich, everyone from titans of industry to Hollywood stars (Sinatra sang at the lobby piano, Springsteen vacations there and Marilyn Monroe’s favorite pool, of the eight on property, was “The Catalina”). Every president until Barack Obama has stayed there, including the Reagans, who went for their honeymoon. There’s a 20,000-square foot luxury spa, two epic golf courses (plus a “championship” 18-hole putting course) and a famed afternoon “high tea” in the sunroom.

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This is where the Big 12 is holding its athletic directors meeting? Even though the league doesn’t have a campus within 800 miles, let alone in the state of Arizona?

You can certainly spell amateurism without a-u-s-t-e-r-i-t-y, but that doesn’t mean you should.

While it’s long established athletic administrators fancy themselves as NFL and NBA owners, and while it’s also true those leagues don’t hold meetings at the Holidome in Stillwater, it’s also worth noting that Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban are self-made billionaires, not athletic directors.

This is especially tone deaf when college sports don’t pay taxes, often drive up the cost of college by charging regular students athletic fees and claim there isn’t a spare dime to either share with football and basketball players or provide full scholarships for entire softball or soccer or volleyball teams.

Then again, this sort of explains everything because they aren’t at the Biltmore by accident. It serves as the site of the Fiesta Summit, a favored junket of athletic administrators who make up the National Collegiate Athletic Industrial Complex.

It’s underwritten by the Fiesta Bowl, which recently changed the event's name from the “Fiesta Frolic” because it sounded too much like a boondoggle. The Fiesta Bowl can afford the event because it’s been given the sweetheart deal to serve as a middleman in college sports' outsourcing of its most valuable product … the football playoff.

Please attempt to follow this circle.

1. The Fiesta Bowl, like all major bowl games, is deathly opposed to the expansion of the playoff from four teams to eight because it would likely lead to games being played on campus, not in “bowls.” This could cause future athletic leaders to realize that they don’t need “bowls” and can make more money keeping everything in house – like the NFL does.

2. Savvy lobbyists that they are, the Fiesta Bowl offers a lush party/ingratiation opportunity for college sports leaders, who gleefully arrive for a few days at the Biltmore.

3. A portion of these college sports leaders, in this case the Big 12 athletic directors and coaches, meet during this bowl-sponsored event to discuss fears of being left out of the College Football Playoff. The most prominent remedy to this discussion is to radically revamp the very fabric of their institution – the conference – by expanding to Florida or New England or Idaho or who knows where.

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