Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said Monday that his conference wasn't going to expand to simply get to 12 teams and have a conference title game. But the conference is apparently keeping its expansion possibilities open.

According to the Sporting News, the conference recently met with Cincinnati, currently a member of the American Athletic Conference. The meeting was before the College Football Playoff controversy that erupted on Sunday when Big Ten champion Ohio State vaulted over TCU to claim the No. 4 spot in the four-team field. The Big Ten plays a conference title game and Ohio State won it 59-0.

From Sporting News:

Big 12 officials recently met with administrators from the University of Cincinnati, a source close to the university told Sporting News. That is not an indication membership will be offered to the Bearcats in the immediate future — only that they would be a candidate were such an expansion to be undertaken.

It is not known how many other universities, if any, have had similar meetings. Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby was in New York and unavailable to speak Monday with Sporting News.

Since it has 10 teams, the Big 12 is currently under the 12-team threshold for having a conference title game. While the conference added TCU and West Virginia after Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri and Texas A&M left for different conferences, Bowlsby has said further expansion would need to take all sports into consideration.

"Adding two schools for the purpose of getting to 12 (to have a league championship game) would be among the poorest reasons to do it," Bowlsby said Monday via USA Today.

Expanding is also easier said than done. If it felt that Cincinnati and another school were appropriate fits for the league, television contracts would have to be renegotiated unless, for some reason, current member schools would take less money for the sake of having 12 teams.

But the Big 12 appears to be surveying the horizon. And given what happened on Sunday and how quickly we've seen conference associations change, it's a good idea. The conference is continuously learning it has to be on its toes.

- - - - - - -

Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @NickBromberg