What U of H officials (and apparently Red McCombs) don't understand is that, if the Big 12 ends up adding fewer than 4 teams (honestly, probably fewer than 6) and one of them is Houston, Texas will likely have 1 foot out the door, waiting for the opportune time to make the jump to the Pac 12 or Big 10 or something. I honestly have doubts about how much adding ANY of the available teams (i.e., teams not in a Power-5 conference already who aren't named Notre Dame) will help the Big 12, but if any teams ARE added (which, again, I think is a high-risk, low-reward venture overall) the goal has to be to expand the conference footprint to a population outside of the current Big 12 states. There's a bigger name school in Iowa, but outside of that we're about as good as we're going to get in the other 4 states the Big 12 has schools in. Would it help if Texas got back to playing for conference championships? Sure. But the state of Texas is covered. A lot. The only thing that would really help here is for the teams within the state to be even better than they currently are.
This isn't an insult to the University of Houston. Honestly, if the last round of Big 12 realignment had occurred now instead of when it did, it'd probably be a pretty open contest between whether to invite TCU or Houston (with Houston having some clear advantages in alumni and student body size potentially balancing out the longevity of TCU's current period of success). If that came up THIS YEAR, I could see it going either way. But... TCU got in already. And the simple fact is, the conference has 4 schools in the same state. And one of them, if they're winning, definitely gets viewers in the city of Houston.
Basically, I can't blame Houston for wanting in to the Big 12. But if they get in, that means the Big 12 said "oh well, we aren't getting into other markets... so we're giving up on trying to compete with the SEC, Big 10, and to a lesser extent the Pac 10 and ACC. And that would mean that the teams with the ability to leave once the GOR ends, would have to start considering their options. Houston getting into the conference that they want to get into, would basically leave the conference in a condition that they wouldn't really want to join it anyway.
If Houston were smart, they'd be looking at who they might take as a travel buddy (SMU? Tulane? Air Force? Boise State? UNLV?) that might appeal to the Pac 12 before Big 12 teams eventually reconsider that option. I'm not saying it would happen for sure, but the Pac 12 is fairly limited as far as options for expansion, if for no other reason than distance. They've clearly had an interest in getting into the Texas market several times in the past and they like their large metropolitan public schools. Houston might still not be their preferred Texas choice, but the city of Houston and the DFW metro area... (maybe even San Antonio, though UTSA has a TON of work to do for that) are probably the next-closest large market cities that border on their current footprint. Austin is in there too. The only competition to speak of, population wise, outside of Houston, DFW, San Antonio, and Austin are the much smaller cities of El Paso, Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and maybe Kansas City (and the schools in each of them are either less prepared to deliver a big market than UofH or are in the Big 12 currently). Again, it would be an outside chance for Houston to convince the Pac 12... but the net effect for the Pac 12 could be a positive, where as the net effect for the Big 12 would be the eventual dissolution of the Big 12 as a power conference or the relegation of the conference to a small, regional conference that can't keep up money-wise with everyone else.
