Colorado agrees to join Pacific 10 Conference

The Pacific 10 Conference became the Pac-11 on Thursday when the University of Colorado accepted an invitation to join the league.

Pac-10 Commissioner Larry Scott said on a teleconference the league could stay at 11 schools —” That is a possibility” — although it isn’t likely.

The plan for expansion to 16 schools is on track, according to sources familiar with the negotiations who did not want to be identified until more issues are settled.

The next important move comes Friday. If Nebraska leaves the Big 12 to join the Big Ten, the Pac-10 will move to issue invitations to five Big 12 schools: Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech.

There are contingency plans in place in case things don’t work out as planned. If Nebraska decides to stay and the Big 12 holds together, the Pac-10 would probably invite Utah to become its 12th member.

There were also multiple reports Thursday that Texas A&M might split from Texas in the Pac-10 package and entertain an offer from the Southeastern Conference. If that happened, and the Big 12 still is dissolved, the Pac-10 would strongly consider offering Kansas a chance to become its 12th member.

The plan, however, is to form a 16-school conference and split into two, eight-team divisions. The winners of those divisions would play in a conference title game. The title game would rotate between divisions, with Jerry Jones’ new stadium in Texas probably becoming a regular stop.

Adding Colorado to the Pac-10 on Thursday was the first piece of the puzzle and it’s a courtship that has been going on for years. The Pac-10 made a move in the 1990s to add Colorado and Texas.

“We have been looking at Colorado for quite some time,” Scott said on the conference call. “We have been through a pretty exhaustive and deliberate process and it was clear to us that in any scenario we were going to consider for expansion, Colorado was a great fit.”

The plan is for all Colorado sports teams to join the conference in 2012, preferably as a member of the new 16-school conference.

Scott said no other invitations have been extended, but that he was “authorized to pursue several different scenarios.”

chris.dufresne@latimes.com