The Big 12 is accepting resumes from expansion candidates.The smallest Power Five conference took a significant step toward adding members Tuesday when its university presidents directed Commissioner Bob Bowlsby to begin evaluating schools interested in joining.Oklahoma President David Boren said the board of directors voted unanimously during a meeting Tuesday in Dallas that coincided with football media days to take another step toward adding to the 10-member league, but they stopped just short of committing to future expansion.I think its a statement from the board that we want to move forward, Boren said. Weve had discussion of the attributes of some of those schools that have come to us and expressed interest. And that we want to move forward and have a full evaluation of exactly the level of their interest, what kind of proposals they might make to us in terms of terms and conditions for joining the conference.When the conference ultimately makes a decision and how many schools it might add are still up in the air, Boren said.Bowlsby said his work could be done before the end of the football season.Its possible that this could extend to our October board meeting, but its also possible that we could have a special meeting sometime between now and then, the commissioner said.The Big 12 has been a 10-team conference since 2012, after Nebraska, Colorado, Texas A&M and Missouri left during the last major wave of realignment and TCU and West Virginia joined.The conference has being batting around the idea of adding more members for more than a year and begins its search with plenty of suitors. The Big 12 has been getting pitches behind the scenes for months from American Athletic Conference schools such as Cincinnati, Connecticut, Memphis, Houston and Central Florida. BYU, a football independent, has made it known it wants into a Power Five conference. Colorado State has also reached out to Big 12 leaders.Weve been contacted by a number of institutions, and I would imagine after this news breaks well be contacted again, Bowlsby said.The Big 12 has already announced plans to reinstitute its conference championship game in 2017.The reconstituted Big 12 in 2014 hailed its round-robin football schedule as the way to produce One True Champion, but the slogan looked silly when it ended up with co-champions that season. Both TCU and Baylor were left out of the first College Football Playoff. After that season, the Big 12 began to reassess.Conference leaders decided not to overreact to one years results and instead studied expansion, along with bringing back the title game and trying to start its own television network.Oklahoma reached the College Football Playoff as the Big 12 champion last season, tempering some of the conferences nervousness. Firms hired to crunch the numbers for the Big 12 told the conference earlier this year that expanding would increase the chances of making it to the playoff and boost revenue.Boren has been the leading advocate for expansion. He said the conference was psychologically disadvantaged by having only 10 teams. On the other side, Texas wanted to stay at 10 -- and keep its own Longhorn Network in place.In June, the Big 12 said starting a TV network was unlikely. Expansion also seemed unlikely coming out of those meetings. Even Boren was backing off.But Monday, it was reported that ESPN will announce soon the creation of an Atlantic Coast Conference Network to start in 2019, a move expected to lead to a long extension of the conferences grant of media rights. The grant of rights virtually locks conference members together.Boren acknowledged the ACC news influenced the Big 12. He said we cannot just sit on the sidelines and not be proactive ourselves.Big 12 leaders have acknowledged that none of the schools most likely to be added are a natural fit. None is guaranteed to deliver both highly competitive teams -- especially football teams -- as well as large new markets to increase the value of future media deals.I would say that we are looking for members that will grow over time as we grow, Bowlsby said, that will bring stability to the conference and that have a high top end, will benefit from an affiliation with the schools that are currently in our conference.---Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Wholesale .C. -- Rodney Hood connected from all over the court while freshman Jabari Parker was busy swatting shots and scoring in transition. Womens Ultra Boost Clearance . Booth picked up 65 caps after making her national team debut in 2002 at the age of 17. She most recently played for Sky Blue FC of the National Womens Soccer League. "It just felt like it was my time to move on," she said in a phone interview from her hometown of Burlington, Ont. http://www.ultraboostclearance.com/pure-boost-shoes-sale.html . -- Ty Montgomery had 290 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns, and fifth-ranked Stanford held on to beat No. Ultra Boost Sale . -- James Young couldnt wait to apply those tweaks to his jump shot, and the first one he made against UT Arlington told him it could be a good night. Yeezy Boost Sale Online . Louis Blues teammates who would also be participating in the Olympics, Alex Pietrangelo felt right at home, no different in some ways to the travel experience of any old road trip – save for the length of the journey, that is. MOSCOW -- Russian investigators are pressing graft charges against a former deputy governor of St. Petersburg linked to the construction of a trouble-plagued stadium that is to host World Cup matches in 2018.The Investigative Committee said in a statement on Wednesday that Marat Oganesyan, the citys deputy governor in 2013-2015, has been detained on suspicion of embezzling 50 million rubles ($777,000) on a single contract to supply display screens for the new stadium. However, it could be only part of a much larger corruption case.Investigators said Oganesyan arranged for a friendly subcontractor to win the contract and funneled the money out via shell companies. Investigators said they have filed a motion with a local court to jail Oganesyan pending the probe.One official in the St. Petersburg city hall as well as three employees of the subcontractor are also under investigation in relation to the 69,000-seat stadium, provisionally called the Zenit Arena.Current deputy governor Igor Albin said on Twitter that the total sum of damages at the stadium ... exceeds 700 million rubles ($10.7 million), citing evidence presented to the city governments construction department.No external events will influence the construction of the Zenit Arena now: the budget for the construction is balanced and everything that is needed has been bought, Albin added.Wednesdays announcement came amid a blitz of corruption-related arrests and investigations in Russia. Late Monday, Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev was dettained over an alleged $2 million bribe, while Wednesday also saw reports of investigations at a state technology firm and a helicopter manufacturer.ddddddddddddThe St. Petersburg stadium has taken almost a decade to build, prompting Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to publicly call it disgraceful. The stadium, which is to host a 2018 World Cup semifinal match, is set to cost more than $600 million. Until the ruble dropped sharply in value in 2014 against the backdrop of international sanctions and a low oil price, the same ruble budget was worth more than $1 billion, making it one of the most expensive soccer stadiums in history.The St. Petersburg City Hall in July fired the general contractor over repeated delays and cost overruns, also saying that authorities have gone to the police because it has allocated $39 million for the construction which has been unaccounted-for. Later than month President Vladimir Putin issued a special decree, ordering officials in St. Petersburg to speed up the construction.FIFA expects Zenit Arena to be delivered in December so that it is ready to host the Confederations Cup next year.There have also been several deaths of workers during construction. In the past 12 months, three have died in accidents, and investigators said Tuesday a North Korean man working on the stadium had died of an apparent heart attack in a workers communal area at the stadium. ' ' '