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Would Memphis elevate Big 12 hoops?
School officials reportedly offer up to $200 million to join the Big 12, so what's the issue? Plus: Oregon gets a big man, a massive MTE is finalized, Kentucky's $$$ plans, and much more.
Mike Miller
July 22, 2025
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Good morning! What would you do for $200 million? Better yet, what wouldn’t you do?
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1. Big 12 unlikely to add Memphis despite $200M offer
How badly does Memphis want out of the American Athletic* Conference? Enough to offer a package worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the Big 12. But even that doesn’t sound like it’s enough.
From Yahoo! Sports:
Memphis president Bill Hardgrave has spent at least 14 months visiting with the presidents and top athletic administrators of many Big 12 schools in individual, on-campus meetings that have culminated in a membership offer to the league that is expected to be as high as $200 million over the next five years.
Big 12 officials are in the midst of exploring the proposal, but league-wide support is not there, multiple conference officials told Yahoo Sports. Any expansion move needs the support of a super majority of the league’s presidents and chancellors, or 12 of the 16. A more finalized copy of the Memphis proposal was disseminated among conference athletic administrators in the past few days.
Big 12 officials have weighed the offer for weeks, per the article. But as one Big 12 leader told Yahoo! Sports, “We vetted Memphis when we added the other four [Cincinnati, UCF, Houston and BYU] and chose not to add them. What’s changed now?” Another official told The Athletic that there’s “very little momentum for this.”
Adding Memphis likely would increase Big 12 schools additional sponsorship revenue by $2 million per school and isn’t unlike SMU’s approach to move to the ACC. But if the Big 12 says no, there’s a chance Memphis tries a similar bid with the Pac-12 — though it did a perfunctory social media post about new AAC branding on Monday.
“The University of Memphis is aware of the recent conversations regarding our potential inclusion in the Big 12,” the school said in a statement. “While those discussions did not ultimately move in our favor, our University and Memphis Athletics are stronger than ever, and we look forward to continuing to strengthen our position nationally.”
If the Big 12 did add Memphis, it would be a big brand addition for hoops. The Tigers have reached three Final Fours, have been to 13 NCAA Tournaments this century and regularly land elite talent. It’s got a large, devoted fan base and wouldn’t be just a run-of-the-mill program. But it could struggle amid the rigors of one of college basketball’s strongest conferences.
The Tigers have an average KenPom finish of 46 under coach Penny Hardaway’s seven seasons. They’ve outpaced their preseason KenPom ranking just three times in that span and have never finished higher than 20th (the Big 12’s had no fewer than three times finish in the top 20 each of those seasons.)
If you used Memphis final KenPom rating each of the last seven seasons, it would’ve ranked 9th, 13th, 5th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th among Big 12 teams. Plus, the Tigers have just one NCAA tourney win since 2015 and haven’t been to the Sweet 16 or beyond since John Calipari left in 2009.
That’s an NCAA tourney-caliber program, but isn’t the dynamo that UConn or Gonzaga would’ve been. And that’s one of the standards Big 12 officials likely considered.
Memphis has the money, and it has the brand. The lack of on-court success might be the thing really holding it back.
*More on that name below
2. Oregon goes big with latest addition + more commits
Oregon returns one of the Big Ten’s best big men in senior center Nate Bittle. The Ducks also have 6-9 Kwame Evans, plus Ohio State transfer Sean Stewart.
But they’ve been chasing various big men all summer for a little more heft up front. And they finally got one.
