Better roll back the counter on days without the Big 12's stability put in question.

ESPN host, college football hot take-a-thon and SEC apologist Paul Finebaum says he thinks that Oklahoma wants out of the conference "pretty desperately" and that "it doesn't take very much" to get the conference expansion wheels turning again in the NCAA.

"I think the Big 12 is in big trouble, and I think this is something that we have been able to detect for some time," Finebaum said on Birmingham, Ala., radio station WJOX on Monday. "I don't think the Big 12 as we know it will still be in existence in five years."

Finebaum, while naming no sources and saying at one point that what he's sharing is "only rumors," claims that the lack of a Big 12 network plays into the uneasiness.

"There are schools in the Big 12 that have looked to get out, and I think continue to look to get out," Finebaum said. "And they can deny it all they want, but they don't have what the SEC and the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ultimately the ACC are going to have, and that's their own network, which is critical in this world of exploding television reality. And I don't know how you can really survive like that.

"Texas has its own network, but that's another issue. And the league just doesn't seem to be very strong from any standpoint.

"There are a lot of rumors out there -- they're only rumors -- I've heard Commissioner Snakey [Greg Sankey of the SEC] recently, I've heard other commissioners maintain that no one is really in the market for expansion. But it doesn't take very much, and usually these things go in twos. I can think of one school in the Big 12 that would like out pretty desperately, and if that happens, would it have a domino effect? And that school is the University of Oklahoma?"

The radio host asked Finebaum if a Big 12 team winning a national title could alleviate some of the uneasiness.

"It wouldn't hurt because that is how we judge things," he said. "Look at the ACC. They're bragging in ACC country about winning both in football and basketball. That is significant, especially in football. So it does elevate your profile, but you can't go down on any checklist and tell me where the Big 12 is excelling right now because they're not."

Just last October, the Big 12 ended the most extended and public expansion casting call by standing pat, a decision schools were urged to call unanimous.

Leading up to the vote, University of Oklahoma President and Big 12 board of directors chairman David Boren publicly waffled back and forth on OU's opinion about expansion before the idea was scrapped. At one point he suggested the 10-member Big 12 is "psychologically disadvantaged" when bumping up against the 12- and 14-member conferences.