Although Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby and board president David Boren said the conference voted against expansion unanimously, a report says otherwise.

ESPN college football reporter Brett McMurphy said when schools favoring expansion realized they couldn't reach the vote threshold to withstand, they gave up. He credits his report to unnamed sources.

McMurphy also mentions a leaked Big 12 memo of do's and don't's. Some of its recommendations: Do say the board arrived at "Unanimous Consensus" and "expansion is no longer an active agenda item." Don't cite competitive disadvantage, say "expansion is dilutive" or say "candidates were not deemed Power 5 worthy." The don't list also warns against referring to any expansion candidate by name.

"When presidents get in a room and read the tea leaves that it's going the way it's going, they go with it," ESPN cites an unnamed source as saying. "Even if there were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 [schools in favor of expansion], those presidents are very skilled in seeing the inevitability of the outcome and aligning on the right side of history. It's pretty easy to get comfortable with that position and stick to it."

The memo also reportedly urged Big 12 officials not to repeat Boren's past comment that the 10-team setup left the league "psychologically disadvantaged."

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