Tulsa is going to have a hard time getting a basketball tournament with the Mabee Center attached. If you need a refresher, that is the site that the Mid-Con left in favor of a HIGH SCHOOL gym at Tulsa Union.

Tulsa's arena will be nice, but it will take years for anything to grow around it. Then they've gotta move their homeless migration out of there.

Plus, I just don't think the Big 12 wants to go to the second-tier cities in the conference. By that I mean, the cities that aren't already hosting the Big 12 on some level -- Wichita, Omaha, Des Moines, Tulsa. I think there's a perception that the league would be "stepping down" hosting one of their big events in one of those places.

The way things have shaken out, it seems like Kansas City, Dallas and OKC have become the "Big 3" when it comes to hosting various Big 12 events. Sure, sometimes Houston or San Antonio get a football title game, but that's only because of their venues, not because they're an easy location to get to. What makes Dallas, KC and OKC so great is that they're basically the middle of the conference -- or close. In OKC's case, we're the bullseye of the entire league, with only Colorado being more than seven hours away in terms of drive time.

As for the football championship, I think the Big 12 is pretty happy with the Dallas (South)/KC (North)/Occassional random city every so often (St. Louis, SA, Houston, Denver one day?) setup. There's ZERO chance the Big 12 football title game is here, as they'd never go on-campus and it's highly unlikely that Oklahoma will ever have a pro-level football stadium.

I think the Big 12 has settled on pretty much this rotation for its tournament sites:

FOOTBALL
-- Dallas
-- Kansas City
-- St. Louis, San Antonio, Houston, Denver every so often

BASKETBALL
-- Kansas City
-- Dallas
-- Oklahoma City

BASEBALL
-- Oklahoma City, likely forever

WRESTLING, GOLF, ETC.
-- Various on-campus sites on a rotational basis.

I don't really see many changes to that over the next 25 years. I just don't think the basketball tourney will go to a Tulsa, because of the "If they get to, we should too" argument from Wichita, Des Moines and Omaha -- all which have new arenas or are planning them.

I fully expect long-term announcements about those sports in the next month or two, since the conference meetings are ongoing at the moment.