Politics and optics appear to be strong driving forces for the alliance and its constituent membership. If the Pac-12 does decide to expand, it is wise to frame that discussion in terms of entertaining inquiries from interested candidates. Then it's not a big deal whether they actually follow through or not. (Which actually appears to be pretty similar to what the Big XII did a few years ago.)

I am giving a lot of weight to the strong comments made by Jim Phillips about maintaining the existence of the Big XII at some level and also reading a lot into other references to stability. Based on those factors I can see something of a path of least resistance.

The Big XII could "call up" some members from the American Athletic Conference to replace/refill its membership numbers. Likewise the AAC could then pull some teams over from Conference USA to meet its operational objectives. And then C-USA could look to the Atlantic Sun as a source of replacement teams to shore up its numbers. I'm guessing that all of this could be accomplished without really damaging any of the parties involved -- both from an existing perception of relative value as well as from a "political" viewpoint.

But I'm just spitballing, mind you.