I think Iowa State would have joined the Big Ten. The same possibly for Kansas & Kansas State. Missouri I do not know.
I would not be surprised if TCU might want to get in the Big 12. The majority of the games would not even be out of their home state.
I understand that KU, ISU, and Missouri all approached the Big Ten and were told no. They just weren't in any of the plans which the Big Ten envisioned. K-State isn't a member of the American Association of Universities which was required for a new admission to the Big Ten.
Yeah, the sensible thing to do would been to have Boise St. join the Pac-Ten. ut there’s an academic myth of excellence in the Pac Ten which would have been exposed by having an outsider kick their asses in sports AND academics. Pac-Ten graduates are rock-ignorant. I saw a UCLA 4.0-GPA graduate go 0-for-5 on “Are You Smarter Than a 5th-Grader,” even though every question was applicable to his major (politics). Those idiot Jay Walkers? Half of them probably went to Pac Ten schools! One in eight Californians knew that Nancy Pelosi was house speaker, even though she’s a Californian. (The one exception is Stanford, which seems to have excellent business, politics and engineering programs.)