These Big 12 conference realignment ideas are wild, crazy and super entertaining
If your favorite team resides in the Big 12, there’s a good chance you have a strong opinion about what should happen next in the college football soap opera currently known as conference realignment.
There’s also a good chance you have loudly shared that strong opinion with as many people as possible.
There’s a reason Iowa State athletics director Jamie Pollard urged Cyclones fans “not to get caught up in all the rumors” surrounding conference realignment earlier this week, while conceding “its fun and it’s interesting.”
Conference realignment is a lot like a coaching search — every fan has his or her list of preferred outcomes, regardless of what is realistic and what is not. And we like to hear them all. Sometimes the most outlandish suggestions are the most entertaining.
Here’s one interesting proposal that was shared with The Eagle via e-mail late last week from a reader named Tyler: The Big 12 should trade Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC for former members Missouri and Texas A&M. Once they are back in the fold, he suggested, Colorado and Nebraska will also want to return to their old stomping grounds.
Hey, there have been worse ideas.
Conference realignment unexpectedly rattled the Big 12 a decade ago when Colorado bolted for the Pac-12 and Nebraska jumped ship to the Big Ten. Texas fatigue was one of the main reasons they left. Texas A&M also wanted to escape the Longhorns’ shadow a year later, which helped prompt Missouri’s exit to the SEC.
With Oklahoma and Texas now heading to the SEC, those aforementioned teams could return to the Big 12 without stressing out about the Longhorn Network, questionable last-second calls in the conference championship game or uneven revenue sharing.
To be sure, playing in a different conference than Texas wasn’t their sole motivation for leaving the Big 12. But if it was, heck, the runway is now clear for a return flight.
All things being equal, that move might appeal to some Colorado, Missouri and Nebraska fans, who once got along swimmingly as Big Eight rivals. Texas A&M could possibly return out of spite. If all that happened, it would return the Big 12 to (gasp) a mathematically correct 12 members.
How fun would it be to watch K-State/Nebraska and Kansas/Missouri play all the time again?
Alas, each of those former Big 12 schools, with the possible exception of Colorado, stands to make much more money in its current conference than in a refortified Big 12.
Entertaining as such an old Big Eight reunion might be, that proposal remains one of the most far-fetched options we have heard in the past week.
Here are a few others:
More SEC expansion
Some have speculated that FOMO, or fear of missing out, will make the most powerful teams in other conferences want to pull a Texas and also leave for the SEC in the near future.
The theory: There’s no reason the SEC has to stop expanding at 16 teams. There’s nothing preventing the conference from ballooning in size and becoming a mini NFL with 20-plus teams.
In that scenario, the SEC could lure in Big Ten giants like Michigan and Ohio State or ACC powers like Clemson and Florida State or Pac-12 schools like USC and Washington.
Such an outcome would make it the ultimate football conference in college sports, even moreso than it is right now.
That seems unlikely, though. Fun as it may seem for a conference to collect juggernaut teams like infinity stones on a gauntlet, geography issues seem like too much of a hurdle to clear, even though it could create a truly national conference of football powers. Texas and Oklahoma are both located within driving distance of current SEC schools. Plus, the Longhorns have always had eyes for greener pastures. It would take several other teams with wandering eyes from different time zones to make that idea work.
Pac-12 merger?
The possibility of the Big 12 and Pac-12 merging into a gargantuan 20-team conference was reportedly discussed by Big 12 leaders shortly after they learned that Oklahoma and Texas were plotting a move to the SEC. So perhaps it’s not completely outlandish to think it could happen.
That being said, it seems like a long shot.
Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said on Tuesday that his conference is under no pressure to expand, even though several schools, presumably from the Big 12, have reached out about that possibility.
The Pac-12 already lags behind the other power conferences in terms of on-field success and revenue. Adding the leftover Big 12 teams might help from a competitive standpoint, but it’s hard to see them bringing in significantly more cash.
It’s more likely that the conferences could form some sort of scheduling alliance or the Pac-12 expresses desire in only half of the Big 12’s remaining teams to match the SEC at 16 members. Expanding into Texas and the Central Time Zone might be appealing.
Sharing modest revenue 20 different ways might make for a tougher sell.
Kansas and Iowa State to the Big Ten?
Big Ten presidents love few things more than schools that are members of the prestigious Association of American Universities.
Iowa State and Kansas are both members of the AAU, which has led some to believe they have a shot at gaining Big Ten membership in the near future.
Perhaps they do. The Cyclones have an up-and-coming football program and the Jayhawks are a blueblood in men’s basketball. But Kirk Bohls, of the Austin American Statesman, reported they may need more than that.
Dan Wetzel, of Yahoo! Sports, also pointed out on Twitter that the Big Ten is not urgently looking to expand.
Things could always change. Few saw the Big Ten poaching Maryland and Rutgers from other conferences the last time that conference decided to expanded. There has also been speculation that the Big Ten may look to raid the Pac-12 to answer the SEC.
For now, it seems any Big 12 schools looking for a life raft to the Big Ten may need to make a stronger impression before one arrives.
Fear not, though, Jayhawks fans. Bohls thinks the Pac-12 could be interested in adding KU along with a few other Big 12 teams.
This story was originally published July 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "These Big 12 conference realignment ideas are wild, crazy and super entertaining."