Why some believe that, even with 4 new members, the Big 12’s turmoil is just beginning
Ever go to a company party where you know the people there don’t get along, actively stab one another in the back and generally think the guy across the punchbowl is a delusional and destructive moron?
I have. Did it this week, actually.
It was called Big 12 Basketball Tipoff.
This is what you might think of as Big 12 Media Day, and officially, we all know the conference can kindly be described as “in transition.” Unofficially, you should know that “in transition” means much more than the pending arrival of four new schools (BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston) and departure of two (Texas and Oklahoma).
Kansas and Kansas State are on a path toward a moment that could define them for decades, and the scary part is that nobody knows the timeline or best preparation for what’s to come.
The Big 12 is in this really weird place right now where they are almost certainly getting better in basketball, and may even be getting better in football (losing OU hurts, but compare the recent results of UCF and Cincinnati with those of Texas). But nobody with shred of dignity would argue the league is getting better where it matters — money and power, baby.
Texas and Oklahoma are going through a lot of trouble and potentially facing massive (if short-term) financial hits to join the SEC, a league in which they’ll no longer enjoy such a funding advantage or have the country’s clearest path to the College Football Playoff.
It’s one thing to get dumped. Happens to everybody, at some point. It’s another thing to make every concession imaginable, contort your life completely around another’s wishes, and still watch them walk out the door.
Moments like an all conference gathering tend to scrape up the raw feelings, and the Austin American Statesman did a lot of scraping in an interview with Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby.
“I have to get over the sense of personal betrayal,” he told the newspaper in one of several brutally honest lines.
Here’s another: “They never made us aware of any concerns in advance.”
And another: “Anybody that thinks Texas’ football problems have been a result of league affiliation (is) completely delusional.”
And still another: “Every league is structured similarly to what ours is. There’s three or four bell cows and there’s the rest.”
That last line is an unintentional self-own, because who are the Big 12’s bell cows now? Oklahoma State, which has always been walking uphill in chasing the Sooners? Baylor, which has had some success in football and basketball but lacks regional or national pull? Kansas, which now has the largest known athletic budget in the conference (private schools like Baylor aren’t included), but stinks out loud at football?
The Big 12 is trying — trying — to put on a strong face. The problem is that reality is stubborn, and at some point the league went from a marriage of convenience to a relationship of begrudged convenience.
They’re together, for now, but nobody from any of these schools can swear that this is sustainable.
Recently, Kansas athletic director Travis Goff said the quiet part out loud when he was asked if the Big 12 adding four new members closed the door on KU being open to other conversations.
“No,” he said. “The beauty of it is, is when you think about being focused on what’s best for Kansas, that applies to anything we do. It applies to conference affiliation …”
That was only reinforced this week. One Big 12 source said he spent part of the basketball media day “looking around the room and wondering who’s working who.” Another, told that at least one insider gave the league less than two years before it would inevitably experience another shakeup, responded: “I don’t know, but it’s not up to us and that’s the problem.”
In other words: College sports are being shaped by those with power, and the Big 12 is fresh out of juice.
Here’s one way this might go. The NCAA has created a Constitution Committee that is expected to further divide its existing division, which will in turn divide the 351 Division I schools — 130 play FBS football, 65 are in so-called Power 5 conferences (including Notre Dame), and 15 or so are the schools Bowlsby had in mind when he said “bell cows.”
The defining question for the other 50 schools in major conferences is this: Are you closer to the bell cows, or closer to the bottom? Because a consolidation of power is coming, so legacies and fortunes will be determined by which side of the fault line a school is on.
The answers for KU and K-State are … uncomfortable.
For Kansas, the reality is that they’re behind schools like Rutgers, Mississippi State, Indiana and Missouri in revenue. The Jayhawk is a strong national brand, the AAU designation matters and the basketball program is a certified giant. But that’s made almost meaningless by KU’s performance in football, which determines the structure of power in college sports.
K-State’s reality is even more frustrating. KSU has done everything right — good facilities, strong ticket sales, bowl games in nine of the last 10 non-COVID seasons. But because K-State operates with the smallest known budget in the Big 12, in part because of a geographic disadvantage that’s simply out of their control, the Wildcats could be pushed to the wrong side of the fault line.
In other words, KU needs football to be un-embarrassing fast (which could be made more difficult by realignment and the NCAA’s new transfer rules); and K-State might benefit from some good ol’ fashioned politicking — KSU’s strengths and successes could be made better known, and perhaps thus more widely accepted.
These are the high-stakes games that are being played in private, even as the conference presents the strongest public face possible. It has no other choice, right?
The 10 current Big 12 schools are bound by a grant of rights. Four more are set to join in two years, which could be the right time for Texas and Oklahoma to depart.
But who knows what college sports will look like by then? Or whether another round of Big 12 shakeups won’t happen first?
These are the questions that will be answered in time. And these are just some of the questions being asked inside the conference.
This story was originally published October 22, 2021 at 5:00 AM.