The wheels of conference realignment are turning once more with news of OU and Texas heading to the SEC
Once more college football fans are reading reports of schools looking to jump conferences. With news of Texas and Oklahoma looking to leave the Big 12 for the SEC, additional reports are coming out about how the other Power 5 conferences will respond.
If this happens, I believe two things become true moving forward. First, the Big 12 is dead. Second, the Big Ten as one of the new Power 4 will not be able to find a pair of schools rivaling the OU and Texas move to the SEC.
R.I.P Big 12
The report of Teaxs and OU leaving for the SEC caught Big 12 officials off guard. Now those officials are scrambling to keep the two cornerstone programs in the conference, but it sounds like their efforts will be futile.
So where does that leave the conference? One idea floated around was moving forward with the remaining eight schools, but that I believe would be the least likely scenario to happen. The conference would be on life support at that point, and just a shell of its former self.
Some have speculated that the Big 12 could absorb some schools from the AAC, or C-USA. But you have to ask, what would be the incentive to accept an invite to this new Big 12? Without the Longhorns or Sooners, the conference would be on par with the Group of 5 conferences.
What will most likely end up happening is the remaining schools will have to find new homes in other conferences. Reports have already begun popping up about teams reaching out to other conferences. Iowa State and Kansas have been linked to the Big Ten, while TCU, Baylor, and Texas Tech have been rumored as Pac-12 targets. Oklahoma State is the only school I have seen that has been rumored for both.
Oklahoma and Texas announced yesterday they will not renew their grant of media rights past 2025. That means the remaining schools have time to plan on what they are going to do moving forward. Though make no mistake, this news is the death knell for the Big 12 conference.
How should the Big Ten respond?
As mentioned above, some schools have reportedly reached out to the Big Ten about membership. From what I saw initially, many saw Iowa State and Kansas as the most likely candidates to join the conference after the Big 12 implodes.
I do believe those schools fit well culturally with the other Big Ten members, and work geographically with the conference, but adding those schools just to get to 16 members to match the SEC is short-sighted in my opinion.
There are no two schools that exist that rival the impact of a Texas and Oklahoma joining your conference. Both of those programs finished one and eight in terms of revenue generated in 2018-2019, and consistently finish around that mark most years.
If the Big Ten elects to bring on anyone from the dissolved Big 12, that has to be the first step. The next step needs to be working with either the ACC or Pac-12 on some type of merger that combines media rights between the two conferences.
If the SEC is increasing to 16, and according to Josh Pate at 247 Sports they may not be stopping there, then you as the Big Ten need to look beyond adding a few schools and look to add a conference.
Having some type of ACC or Pac-12 merger would snag media markets that would stretch further than what the SEC could reach. If you partnered with the Pac-12, your conference would have a market stretching from New Jersey/New York to Los Angeles. If you partnered with the ACC, the market would capture the whole east coast and much of the central US, while competing directly with the SEC.
It’s up to Big Ten leadership to decide which path is the best moving forward. That means we have to rely on commissioner Kevin Warren again to make the correct decision, so excuse my dread as I contemplate that thought.
However, staying put is not an option, as staying put when the college landscape was changing all around them is one reason the Big 12 is soon to be extinct.