Talk of Colorado heading to the Big 12 is ramping up as the conference convenes in West Virginia for league meetings.

CBS Sports reports that Colorado — currently a member of the Pac-12 — has been in “substantive” talks with the Big 12 about potentially joining the conference. With Texas and Oklahoma on the way out after this season, the Big 12 is already set to welcome new members BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston in 2024. 

Meanwhile, the Pac-12 is already losing USC and UCLA next year when the schools move to the Big Ten, and the conference is having trouble nailing down a new media rights deal. The Big 12, on the other hand, in 2025 will begin a new six-year media rights package with ESPN and Fox worth a total of $2.28 billion.

Colorado athletic director Rick George was decidedly noncommittal on his school’s athletic future. “In a perfect world, we’d love to be in the Pac-12, but we also have to do what is right for Colorado at the end of the day,” he told CBS Sports.

With new coach Deion Sanders stoking excitement in Colorado, don’t expect the Buffaloes to stay still for much longer.

Bigger Is Better

This week, expansion will be a major theme for the Big 12, which is also reportedly exploring the possibility of adding Gonzaga and UConn to strengthen its basketball roster. 

New commissioner Brett Yormark has made growing the league a major focus since taking over last year. “At the end of the day, I’m looking at this from a long-game perspective,” Yormark told Front Office Sports.

Barcelona has won yet another La Liga championship campaign in front of its fans at the historic Spotify Camp Nou — a venue it won’t see again until late next year, if not longer. 

The stadium, which closed its doors Sunday, is set to undergo major renovations as part of the club’s $1.6 billion Espai Barça project.

Next season, Barca will play at Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, originally built in 1927 and renovated over 30 years ago ahead of the 1992 Summer Olympics. The stadium was the home of fellow La Liga side Espanyol from 1997-2009.

Beyond domestic play, the Blaugrana will host UEFA Champions League matches at their temporary home, as well as the Copa del Rey and Supercopa de España.

Barcelona president Joan Laporta said he expects the club to move back into a renovated Camp Nou in November 2024, but many have questioned whether that’s possible. Additions to Camp Nou will include a roof and new suites.

The Olympic Stadium has a capacity of about 56,000 — about 40% less than Camp Nou’s nearly 100,000 seats. Barca rivals Real Madrid, who finished second in La Liga, play at the 81,000-capacity Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.

Season-ticket holders can choose to opt out of next season and return when Barcelona moves back into Camp Nou, a move that will surely bring down the club’s bottom line.

The SEC spring meetings are underway in Destin, Florida — with the future of the conference’s football scheduling system still up in the air.

The major issue is the possibility of expanding teams’ league schedules from eight to nine games per season.

Big changes are already on hand for 2024. The conference is dismantling its eastern and western divisions when Texas and Oklahoma join as part of the new 16-team format. 

The College Football Playoff itself is expanding to 12 teams — and with the SEC likely to get at least as many of the at-large bids as the rest of the country each year, many schools want more games against conference opponents to prove themselves. But playing an extra conference game (on the road every other year) could mean losing a home game against a hand-picked opponent — virtually guaranteeing a win and box-office success.

ESPN could push the SEC over the edge by boosting its rights fee, but the network is reportedly not a lock to do that, at least initially. ESPN is set to pay the conference about $710 million annually through 2034.

No major developments materialized on Tuesday, and a vote on a new scheduling system may not take place this week.

But SEC commissioner Greg Sankey would surely like to make a decision sooner rather than later, telling the Associated Press, “At some point we have to land the proverbial airplane. I think we’re ready to do that.”

Cricket’s popularity continues to soar as the Indian Premier League drew a record digital audience for Monday’s 2023 IPL Final between the Chennai Super Kings and Gujarat Titans.

JioCinema, a streaming service backed by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani — Asia’s richest man with an estimated net worth of nearly $90 billion and owner of the Mumbai Indians cricket team — attracted about 32 million concurrent viewers for the match, Bloomberg reported.

The figure — a global record for a livestreamed event — was boosted not only by free distribution of the rain-delayed, rain-shortened match, but also by fan speculation that Chennai’s star cricketer, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, would be making his final professional appearance.

Last year, JioCinema and parent Viacom18 secured the short-form cricket tournament’s digital rights, beating out rival bidders such as Disney with a reported five-year, $2.6 billion deal, and will now look to convert its record audience for free content into paid subscribers.

As that effort unfolds, investors and media companies continue to flock to the sport. After centuries of projecting a more staid, conservative image, in recent years the sport has been invigorated by injections of glitz and glamor for an increasingly higher profile.

Earlier this month, New York-based investment firm Tiger Global neared a $40 million deal to invest in the Rajasthan Royals, while efforts are also building to include cricket in the 2028 Summer Olympics.