David Jones | djones@pennlive.com

Kansas' athletic director announced last week that it will unveil a massive $300 million stadium expansion and renovation in September. At almost the same time, Nebraska patriarch Tom Osborne made a cryptic statement suggesting that one or two of his old Big 12 brethren might still be interested in hopping to the Big Ten. It all raises thoughts of a Big Ten super-conference with encapsulated divisions aligned by the Central and Eastern Time Zones.

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The term “big” is by its very nature a homonym. It can be employed to define very different entities. Even within those definitions, “big” is relative.

In no other realm is that more true than the hyperbolic world of major conference athletics where even the numerals they place after “Big” don’t mean what they say. In specific, we have a tenuous Big 12 Conference which is really only 10 schools and can ill-afford further defections. And we have a Big Ten Conference that’s really 14 schools and seems bent on following the consumption mandate of the Monroe Doctrine.

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Former Nebraska football coach and athletic director Tom Osborne.

Univ. of Nebraska/Rebecca Gratz

In that context, what are we to make of two developments last week? How big is big enough to survive? And how big an empire is too sprawling to sustain?

First, 80-year-old Nebraska grand patriarch Tom Osborne was quoted as implying in his oblique plainsman prose that Big 12 defection and Big Ten expansion may not yet be done:

“I don’t want to start jumping into that hornet’s nest where someone’s quoting me as saying, ‘Well, this school ought to join the Big Ten,’ ” Osborne said during a gathering in Des Moines. “I do know people that I’ve talked to in the past who maybe have some interest. And so I think the Big Ten is a viable option.”

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Will the Big 12 continue on as a viable entity? It seems certain that no changes will occur publicly for at least four or five years when media rights deals in the Pac-12, Big Ten and Big 12 begin to come due for renegotiation.

And by that time, many new players on burgeoning online-only platforms could be significant bidders. The revenue and influence of Amazon, Google, Twitter, YouTube, PlayStation Vue and NetFlix has exploded recently. Who’s to say one or more can’t become a main rights-holder of college football content? The Big 12 is flexible to make a deal with such a digital platform because its rights aren’t tied up in agreements with a cable entity; it’s the only Power Five conference that has no cable channel either existing or planned.

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Maybe, in the future, the leagues will keep the content to themselves. The Big Ten Network and BTN.com could, for instance, emerge as the sole home of the conference’s live sports programming with no outside entity involved at all.

That puts a very different spin on what schools the Big Ten might want to acquire and why. When cable-rights fees begin to take a backseat to online platforms as more and more people cut the cable cord, it’s hard to tell from where the money will come and how much that will be. For certain, the schools with large, rabid alumni bases will remain targets rather than cable markets. If you’re a have-not football school right now in a Power Five conference, you need to up your game immediately. Your fan base must begin to care in volume and soon.

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Kansas' Memorial Stadium was first erected in 1921 and now has a capacity of 50,071.

And here's where a second recent development is quite interesting. At a fundraising event in Kansas City last week, Kansas athletic director Sheahon Zenger shocked everyone by announcing a $300 million renovation and expansion to KU's ancient 50,000-seat Memorial Stadium. Considering that KU football only attracted one-tenth of that figure in total gross revenue ($30,245,133) during the 2015-16 fiscal year, that's a mighty impressive outlay.

But, as CBSSports.com's Dennis Dodd pointed out in his Tuesday column, that's what Kansas is apparently willing to do in order to prepare for the next round of conference hopping that, should it occur at all, will begin in about five years. KU wants to make sure that it remains a viable Power Five member whether there's a Big 12 or not. And if the Big Ten shows any interest, KU wants to be an attractive prospective addition.

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Oklahoma players are introduced before last year's game against Ohio State in Norman, Okla.

AP photo

Just to reiterate a point I make constantly: Basketball has next to no bearing on such decisions. Football budgets, revenue and profits commonly dwarf that of men’s basketball by multipliers of three to five. Even at “basketball school” Kansas, the football program made $16.2 million in profit in the 2015-16 fiscal year while the Jawhawks’ powerful hoopsters cleared only 40 percent of that ($6.4 million).

Still, Kansas football has a long way to go to get to the point where it would become attractive for acquisition. But if you believe that the Big Ten would like to expand its influence into the Southwest, it's not so far-fetched.

For one reason, Kansas is the next-door neighbor to Oklahoma. And the Sooners are a bona fide football cash cow, raking in $94.1 million gross revenue and $58.4 million profit (No. 4 nationally) in fiscal 2015-16.

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Every one of the Big Ten’s three expansions so far (Penn State in 1990; Nebraska in 2010; Maryland and Rutgers in 2014) has been to a state contiguous to current B1G members.

Certainly, the two members the Big Ten would like to have are Notre Dame and Texas. But both seem unlikely options. With ACC members locked in through its long-term grant-of-rights agreement, the Big Ten's fall-back plan could be an expansion on the western front.

Kansas is a member of the Association of American Universities, a consortium of leading academic research schools. Membership has heretofore been a prerequisite for Big Ten invitation.

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Funny thing is, Nebraska was an AAU member when it was invited but had its accreditation revoked shortly after jumping from the Big 12 to the Big Ten. It's been speculated without substantive evidence that former University of Texas president Robert Berdahl (1993-97) who was also the AAU president during the time Nebraska was ejected (2006-11) might have had something to do with it.

Whatever, does the fact that Nebraska has not been an AAU member for six years now change the parameters of a prospective Big Ten addition? Such as, perhaps, Oklahoma – who is not an AAU member?

It’s certainly conceivable that Texas and Oklahoma, the two Big 12 big shots, are quite happy with their existence in a league they can hope to dominate financially and maybe reach the College Football Playoff more easily than from either the SEC or Big Ten.

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Plenty of seats were left empty for Kansas State's 59-21 destruction of Kansas in Lawrence in 2011.

Univ. of Kansas/Logan Jones

But what if a 16-team Big Ten essentially became a loose alliance of two 8-team divisions – two leagues within a league?

A prospective Big Ten West with Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northwestern and Illinois becomes a cohesive Central Time Zone neighborhood that looks like it belongs together.

The Big Ten East, likewise, would be all Eastern Time Zone schools: Purdue, Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, Maryland and Rutgers with a distinctive personality.

But none of that has even a chance of happening unless Kansas does what it clearly aims to do – turn its football program into something not only the folks in Kansas City and Topeka want to watch but fans all over the country.

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DAVID JONES: djones@pennlive.com

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