The Big 12 is on the clock … Which schools should get an invite?
On Thursday afternoon, the Pac-12 announced it will not be adding any new members, sinking the only potential life raft for the eight left-behind Big 12 teams.
The Big Ten was never going to add any of those teams, and the ACC doesn’t seem interested in adding West Virginia or anyone else. The Pac-12 was the only realistic landing spot, so now the Big 12 knows exactly what it has to do: Expand.
The league already has a school that ranks 15th in all-time football wins (West Virginia), a school that ranked 26th in Yahoo! Sports’ most recent ranking of overall athletic success (Oklahoma State), a school with a national following for men’s basketball (Kansas), and a school that has won national titles in both men’s and women’s basketball since 2019 (Baylor).
There’s certainly value to build around there, but the league needs to expand for two reasons: 1) They need more TV inventory than they can create with eight schools, and 2) adding teams offers stability in case there are any more defections down the line.
Of course, they don’t want to grow too big to the point that the revenue pie — which won’t be anywhere near as big without Texas & Oklahoma — is being split too many ways.
The best course of action will probably be to add two or four teams, and there seem to be eight logical candidates for those spots.
Here they are, in alphabetical order. Let’s take a look at the biggest pros and cons of each one.
Boise State
Pro: The Broncos went 107–26 during the 2010s, the best record of any non-Power 5 program during that stretch. They’ve played in the Fiesta Bowl three times since 2007, winning all three.
Con: Idaho is the 38th biggest state in the union (though its the second-fastest growing), and Boise is 1,300 miles from the nearest Big 12 school (Kansas State), not to mention 2,200 miles from Morgantown, West Virginia.
BYU
Pro: The Cougars have a national following, and they’re the only ones on this list to have won an official national championship (1984). They garner higher TV ratings, on average, than every other school on this list.
Con: The school refuses to play games on Sundays for religious reasons, which could cause headaches in non-football sports. It also has highly controversial policies pertaining to LGBTQ students, which brought about protests when the Big 12 considered expanding five years ago.
Cincinnati
Pro: The Bearcats’ football program, which has played in three major bowls (losing all three) since 2008, is ranked in the Top 10 going into the 2021 season. The men’s basketball program is a perennial NCAA Tournament team that won two national titles in the ’60s.
Con: In my recent analysis of the size and passion of every college football fan base, the Bearcats scored lower than every school on this list except SMU. In my analysis of football TV ratings, the Bearcats scored lower than every school on this list except SMU and USF.
Houston
Pro: The Cougars are the only team on this list that played a regular-season football game watched by 5 million people between 2015 and 2019, and they did it twice. They also beat Florida State in the 2015 Peach Bowl.
Con: Houston falls within the traditional geographic footprint of the Big 12, and used to play in the same conference as Baylor, TCU and Texas Tech. Those schools may very well not want another Texas school added to the conference.
Memphis
Pro: The Football Tigers won their division three years in a row from 2017–19 before the AAC scrapped divisions last fall. The Men’s Basketball Tigers have a strong history of success, including reaching the title game in 2008.
Con: While the school has strong financial backing from FedEx, it doesn’t have an on-campus football stadium, and the on-campus basketball arena is too small to host men’s games.
SMU
Pro: The Mustangs football program has turned a corner under coach Sonny Dykes after a few down years and are making big strides on the recruiting trail.
Con: Just like Houston, the Big 12 members — particularly the ones in Texas — may rather add teams from outside the league’s existing footprint. But unlike Houston, SMU hasn’t reached a major bowl in nearly 40 years.
UCF
Pro: No school in the country has a larger enrollment than UCF, and the Knights’ football program made the alumni proud with two major bowl wins last decade. They’re showing little signs of slowing down, with a 41–8 record since 2017.
Con: The only real con is that the school is nowhere near any of the schools currently in the Big 12. The closest opponent would be 900 miles away (West Virginia).
USF
Pro: The Bulls would offer the Big 12 a foothold in talent-rich Florida, and could be a good companion to add with UCF. The two schools are located 84 miles from each other, and they have a fun football rivalry deadlocked at 6–6 all-time.
Con: The football program has only been around since 1997 and hasn’t yet had enough success to be an attractive candidate on its own. It’s also more than 900 miles from the nearest current Big 12 school (West Virginia).
So … what should the Big 12 do?
It really comes down to how spread out the conference wants to be geographically.
Seven of the eight schools are fairly close to each other in the middle of the country, but there’s already one outlier with West Virginia. Adding Cincinnati, and to a lesser extent Memphis, would help bridge the gap between the Great Plains and the Mountaineers.
Does the Big 12 want to bridge that gap, knowing that West Virginia might not stick around forever? Would the conference rather just add teams in Texas to cut down on travel? Or does the conference just want to add the best football and athletic programs possible, regardless of where they are?
If they’re just looking for the strongest brand, BYU is the obvious first choice.
And here’s a thought: The Cougars’ Sunday problem could be avoided if the Big 12 offered them a football-only membership, which BYU might be willing to take since it’s already an independent in football. That would also solve potential travel issues in other sports, and might even quell some outrage about the school’s controversial honor code.
Boise State is also a strong candidate and would be a good pair with BYU if the Big 12 wants to expand west. But the conference might rather expand to the east since West Virginia is already there.
The strongest candidate to the east is UCF. If the Big 12 can get past the logistical problems of having one team in Florida, there’s really no downside to adding UCF. Similar to BYU, UCF has the look of a Power 5 school that just doesn’t have Power 5 membership yet.
The Big 12 could also add UCF and USF as a package deal to make travel simpler. Both schools have tremendous potential, even though only one is living up to it so far.
Geography aside, I’d rank these eight schools in this order: BYU, UCF, Boise State, Cincinnati, Houston, Memphis, USF, SMU.
But geography isn’t an aside, especially with the eight current Big 12 schools about to take a revenue haircut when Texas and Oklahoma leave. So it all comes down to how those eight schools want to reshape the conference’s geography, and how much they’re really willing to spend on travel for sports other than football.
