A week after Oregon did so, Washington has reportedly met with the Big Ten to conduct preliminary discussions about joining the league.

The Action Network’s Brett McMurphy reported on Wednesday that UW was represented by lawyers and consultants in meetings with the Big Ten to determine the school’s compatibility with the league. Like the reported Oregon meetings, these conversations did not involve UW’s university president or Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren.

According to McMurphy, the nature of the meetings can be described as necessary first steps for a potential new member in the league.

The Big Ten recently announced its record media rights deal that includes escalators should it add more teams. Washington, along with Oregon, has long been a rumored target.

Warren recently said he could see the Big Ten expanding to 20 teams, but he also said at Big Ten Media Days expansion would happen for the right reasons “at the right time,” and recent reporting has suggested the league might not start making moves again for months.

A report from The Mercury News’ Jon Wilner earlier this week suggested that Ohio State was opposed to further expansion and might not vote to accept new teams.

As it stands, the 16 members of the Big Ten will share an average of $1 billion in revenue each year. The deal is backloaded, according to reports, with the big jump in payouts kicking in during the third year of the agreement and gradually increasing over the final five years. The annual payouts over the lifetime of the agreement for each of the 16 members could average in excess of $70 million per school — not including additional conference disbursements (i.e. bowl and NCAA basketball tournament revenue).

The widely held belief is that additional teams joining the league would need to bring additional value at a certain number or else they’d need to join as partially-vested league members so as to not cut into the fully-vested payouts.