Dan Wolken

USA TODAY Sports

DALLAS — For two months, Big 12 presidents have been standing up and waving their arms, using every available buzz phrase to tell us they want to Do Something about Baylor.

Transparency! Potential sanctions! Nothing is on or off the table!

Heck, commissioner Bob Bowlsby didn’t even dance around it Monday at Big 12 Media Days: “There are certainly those among our board that have felt that the image of the Big 12 and the other members of the Big 12 have been sullied as a result of this incident.”

Bob Bowlsby: Baylor scandal ‘sullied’ the Big 12

Yes, you heard that right. Because a series of horrific crimes took place at Baylor, and because an element of football culture played a role in enabling them, the leaders at Texas and Oklahoma and West Virginia feel their league, and by association their schools, have been sullied. Seriously.

So now, apparently, it’s time to Do Something. But other than transparently grandstanding and shaming a league member that has been guilty of two horrific off-the-field scandals in 15 years, it’s hard to envision what they can do and even harder to say what they should.

On Tuesday, at another location in the Dallas metroplex while the league wraps up its media days, Big 12 presidents will hear a presentation from Baylor’s interim president and two Board of Regents members. Questions will be asked. Information will be shared. It’s possible conclusions will be reached.

But short of kicking Baylor out of the league — and that seems extremely unlikely, if not impossible — does this really amount to anything more than the Big 12 trying to publicly wash itself of the stench?

“I don’t know what the end game is,” Bowlsby said. “The board has a wide array of prerogatives and I wouldn’t presume which ones they would use, if any.”

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Here’s the problem. If the sexual assault scandal that cost football coach Art Briles, athletics director Ian McCaw and school president Kenneth Starr their jobs somehow crossed over into NCAA rules violations (and Baylor has met with the NCAA already), that’s not really for the Big 12 to deal with.

And aside from the “deep concern” presidents have about the ramifications of this awful situation, Bowlsby admits that the Big 12 has no legal standing to require more information from Baylor and no avenue to launch its own investigation.

Complicating matters is that Baylor is a private school (so open records laws don’t apply) and the investigative “report” delivered by the Pepper Hamilton law firm in May that led to Briles’ dismissal wasn’t written but rather presented orally to the school’s trustees.

“What we have in writing is what you have in writing,” Bowlsby said.

So what can the Big 12 do if the NCAA decides that pursuing an extra benefits or institutional control case would be overreaching? A monetary fine? A condemnation of sexual violence on campus? A program to monitor its Title IX compliance?

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Bowlsby wouldn’t go there. Maybe because there’s nowhere to go.

But the Big 12’s rhetoric, at the very least, is provocative.

It sent a Baylor letter in May, then another in June demanding every shred of documentation related to sexual assault investigations to “assess the impact on the Big 12.” And even in the same press conference Monday where Bowlsby praised Baylor’s cooperation, he repeatedly referenced how Baylor’s problems reflected negatively on the league.

“When one member’s reputation is damaged, I think all of our images are damaged,” Bowlsby said. “I think it’s an affiliational issue that all of us share.”

This is a slippery slope for the Big 12. Was the league’s image tarnished by Oklahoma putting Joe Mixon on the football field last season despite punching a female student in 2014? Was it tarnished in 2012 when four TCU players were arrested as part of a campus drug-dealing ring or when star defensive end Devonte Fields was dismissed due to domestic violence allegations?

“I don’t know where the benchmark is,” Bowlsby said. “I don’t know where the bright line is. I know that our presidents' group is fairly comfortable that this one rises to that level.”

But what level is that?

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Since the Big 12’s second letter to Baylor became public, the question has remained unanswered. Other than the ability of nine other presidents in the Big 12 to be on the record Doing Something, there doesn’t seem to be much of a point.

If the Big 12 ultimately decided this situation, on the heels of the cesspool Dave Bliss created for Baylor basketball in 2003, was too much scandal in too short a time to justify continued membership in the league, it would be understandable. For most people, a Big 12 without the Bears wouldn’t be much different than a Big 12 with them.

But that’s not going to happen. It would be too messy, too litigious, too difficult to pull off politically. And anyway, Baylor’s recruits have already scattered to Texas, Oklahoma, TCU. Its next class is going to be a mess. Baylor’s penalty, at least in the short-term, is going to be a return to irrelevance. The Big 12 already has its pound of flesh.

Much easier now to call Baylor on the carpet and pretend to really Do Something when there’s not much more that can reasonably be done.

