How might a 16-member Big 12 Conference look with two divisions? Here are some ideas
Less than 24 hours after the Big 12 Conference announced it was adding three new schools for the 2024-25 school year, two of Arizona State’s top officials met with the media Saturday about the move.
Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson and school president Michael Crow spoke with reporters about the Sun Devils’ new home in the Big 12.
One topic discussed was the potential of the 16 schools in the Big 12 dividing into divisions. Anderson seemed to think that would happen.
“We’re going to try to get the Olympic sports go to divisions and we’ll probably do that in football as well,” Anderson said. “For travel, regionalization, it still makes sense. But it really makes sense in the Olympic sports.”
The 16-school Big 12 will be comprised of Kansas, K-State, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech, Baylor, West Virginia, Cincinnati, Houston, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, BYU, Colorado and Central Florida.
Crow mentioned that no school wants to spend too much on travel, even though the conference is spread over multiple time zones.
“So look at where we are,” Crow said. “We have two schools in Utah, two schools in Arizona, we have Colorado and then we’ve got the schools in Texas. That’s quite a nice group of schools right there. So I don’t how that’s going to end up, but that’s a nice little regional group of schools.”
One problem: That’s nine schools and putting them all in one division would leave the Big 12 with a seven-team division, too. You can expect unbalanced schedules in the new-look Big 12, but that would be taking it too far.
So how might the 16-school conference split into divisions? Here are a few possibilities.
East-West
Zach Barnett of Football Scoop proposed a geographical split between East and West.
East: Kansas State, KU, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Cincinnati, Central Florida, Houston and West Virginia.
West: Baylor, TCU, Texas Tech, Colorado, Utah, BYU, Arizona and Arizona State.
Two downsides to this plan: it would split the original Big 12 schools into different divisions and wouldn’t have the Texas schools in one division.
North-South
Big 12 fans may recall that there once were divisions in the conference, and the schools were split into north and south. That started with the league’s formation in 1996 and continued until 2010.
Schuyler Callihan of the Mountaineers Now blog envisioned this north-south division split:
North: KU, K-State, Iowa State, BYU, Cincinnati, Colorado, Utah and West Virginia
South: Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, Central Florida, Houston, Oklahoma State, TCU and Texas Tech
This would keep the four Texas schools in one division but would split up the original members of the Big 12.
Old guard vs. new guard
It’s possible to keep the eight members of the Big 12 (before this year’s expansion) in one division and put the eight schools that have joined this year or will be joining soon in another division.
It wouldn’t be the Grateful Eight and Hateful Eight (obviously), but it would look like this.
Four divisions
Twitter user Ryan Andrade was thinking outside the box when he proposed a four-division alignment.
This certainly would be interesting.
This story was originally published August 7, 2023 at 10:30 AM.
