Kelly Lyell

kellylyell@coloradoan.com

CSU President Tony Frank said he’s reached out to some of his colleagues in the Big 12 Conference and let them know he can answer any questions they might have about the university should their league decide to expand.

But ultimately, Frank told the Coloradoan editorial board Tuesday, “the Big 12 will decide if they’re going to expand among themselves. If they do decide to expand, they’ll decide when. And when they’re going to expand, they’ll use their own weighting of criteria.”

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It would be financially irresponsible, Frank said, for any school not in one of the Power 5 conferences — Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-12 or Southeastern — to not look into joining one of those conferences, given that they earn as much as $20 million a year more from television rights packages than Colorado State University and schools in the other five Football Bowl Subdivision conferences.

Based on his experience as the chairman of the Mountain West’s Board of Governors during the last round of major conference realignment, Frank doesn’t believe there’s much value in openly lobbying for membership in a conference that hasn’t yet decided whether it wants to expand.

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Schools hoping to join the Mountain West following the departures of BYU and Utah in 2011 and TCU in 2012 visited the campuses of MW schools to make pitches in person to the presidents and sent thick “phone book-size glossy materials” detailing what they each had to offer. Frank said he wouldn’t speak for the other presidents who received those materials, but he personally “was time-challenged to get through that much material.”

The MW ultimately used the staff from its conference office to put together information acquired through third parties that allowed it to compare schools before any invitations were extended. He figures the Big 12 will follow a similar process, if and when presidents of the 10 current members — Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas, Texas Tech and West Virginia — decide on expansion.

Last summer, Frank sent two four-page brochures to West Virginia University President Gordon Gee, a Utah native and former University of Colorado president, promoting CSU and its recent academic and athletic accomplishments, ESPN.com first reported earlier this month. Four additional pages noting CSU’s proximity to Denver International and Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal airports, the school’s large alumni base in the Denver area and the size and reach of the Denver TV market, including Fort Collins, also have been prepared by the school’s communications staff to be shared as they see fit. The Coloradoan obtained the two brochures and the four fact sheets through an open-records request last week.

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Big 12 presidents are meeting next week in Irving, Texas, and Frank said he doesn’t know if expansion will be discussed.

“If they get serious and have a discussion around that, we believe that we would be a good candidate to be a part of that discussion,” Frank said. “But otherwise, the most important thing is for us to stick to our knitting, to be a good university, to put out high-quality athletic programs and focus on the student-athletes that play the game by the right rules and to be good colleagues with the other institutions within our conference.”

CSU, Frank pointed out, is a founding member of the Mountain West and, despite winning conference championships in volleyball, women’s basketball and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field during the 2015-16 school year, isn’t dominating the conference across the board.

“It’s not as if we win every conference championship every year and are kind of yawning because we’re bored,” he said, recounting a conversation he had earlier in the day with athletic director Joe Parker. “We’ve got our work ahead of us as we stand today.”

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University presidents, Frank said, are likely to pick up the phone and contact their colleagues directly, should they want specific information about a school they might want to invite to join their conference. It’s what he and his colleagues did to learn more about schools they were considering inviting to join the Mountain West when it expanded with the additions of Boise State in 2011; Fresno State, Nevada and Hawaii (in football only) in 2012; and San Jose State and Utah State in 2013.

“If you had personal relationships with presidents at other institutions, what seemed effective was if they would pick up the phone and give us a call and say, ‘Hey, look, if you ever get to the point where you’re serious about looking at us, we’d be interested in providing you any information. I think we’ve got a good story to tell.’ That was useful information for us to pass back on.

“That’s essentially the tack we’ve taken, as well. I’ve got colleagues that I know, presidents in the Big 12 that I’ve reached out to and said, ‘Hey, you’ll go through your process. When you get to the right point, we think there’s a good story around CSU. We hope you’ll give it consideration if that becomes appropriate.’

“And we’ve had, there’s no secret here, we’ve had people, colleagues of mine, reach out to me and said, ‘Hey, do you have information for us around X, Y or Z,’ you know that sort of thing, and so I’ve answered those questions.”

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.

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