CSU should count itself lucky that Big 12’s tease didn’t include invitation.

fort collins» On Monday, the word came down in Dallas: The Big 12 Conference decided to remain at 10 schools.

In other news, the Big Ten will stick with 14 members and the Pac-12 at least can count.

That was the latest twist in a sometimes farcical 15month process of study and back-and-forth indecisiveness. Representatives of 11 schools — including Air Force and Colorado State — met with league officials in September and pleaded their cases.

Ultimately, the league didn’t take a vote on specific candidates. Also, according to an internal memo obtained by ESPN, the official stance that this was a “unanimous” decision to forgo expansion unaffected by the league’s relationship with its television partners, Fox and ESPN, was at best misleading and at worst hogwash. The “unanimity” was a contrivance after it was clear that expansion wouldn’t get the necessary eight votes.

I’m not here to sift through the gamesmanship, especially involving Texas’ position on Houston’s possible admission.

What’s important here is that CSU was in the mix, albeit a longshot in a large pool of candidates.

If it had come down to two choices, they would have been Cincinnati and — yes, despite all the state of Texas intrigues — Houston. In part because BYU has become an expansion untouchable, whether that’s for the Big 12 or Pac-12, CSU climbed up a notch. To where? That, I don’t know. Plus, there never was an official prioritization, so there isn’t a right answer to that question. This was not a near miss, yet CSU was taken seriously, largely because of Tony Frank’s clout in the collegial realm of university presidents. It got to plead its case. The issue now is where CSU goes from here.

Next season, the Rams’ new on-campus stadium will open. Coach Mike Bobo’s football program, 3-4 this season going into Saturday’s game at Las Vegas, hasn’t been completely built on the success of predecessor Jim McElwain’s reign. Yet that mainly was a single 2014 season of maximum achievement and one of the best coaching jobs I’ve ever witnessed. To be fair, McElwain’s short-term approach and sudden departure left behind a bill that came due, and Bobo is paying it.

What’s most impressive is Bobo’s own impatience, his refusal to rationalize and his energy in emphasizing the building of a national recruiting base. That was on display Wednesday, when he was asked about junior safety Justin Sweet perhaps patiently awaiting his chance to get into the lineup as he played behind upperclassmen the last couple of seasons.

“If you’re going to sit around and wait your turn, then we’re going to sign somebody that’s going to pass you by,” Bobo said. “We have to sign some more guys on the defensive side to get some more competition on this football team.”

That was about Sweet, but it could have been about anybody.

Football, of course, is the centerpiece of any argument made to the Big 12, or any other league. That’s the case, though several of the candidates in the Big 12 expansion race are struggling on the field. But the Big 12’s decision not to expand was positive for CSU. The process helped increase CSU’s visibility nationally.

Now CSU’s goal has to be the realistic but ambitious combination of making the football program a perennial power in the Mountain West, of filling those seats in the new on-campus stadium next season and beyond, and being poised to plead its case (again) the next time a Power Five conference considers expansion.