Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.
I mean, this is big! This is huge! If Oklahoma and Texas are really trying to join the SEC, as is being reported and sounds more real by the hour, this is a big darn deal! Some thoughts:
If the twelve-team playoff is happening, does the Power Five’s existence even matter?
It seems like we’re heading to a world in which the “power conference” designation is more a sports talk show debate than something of consequence, given that membership in a power conference will no longer be an unofficial requirement for playoff admission, and more specifically, that there’s no provision in the twelve-team proposal guaranteeing any conference champion a spot. It’ll be more like basketball, in which “Power Five” can be thrown around as an idea rather than a concrete thing. So the question of the Big 12’s survival, or of the AAC’s survival, or of the Big 12 maintaining its “prestige,” might be less of an issue for the theoretical national championship paths of the schools involved than would have been the case were the four-team system to remain.
Then again, the College Football Playoff rankings have always been rather stark in their Power Five v. Group of Five divide, so they might not adjust smoothly to a gradient power structure in which the SEC is at the top, the Big Ten is next, the ACC follows, the Pac-12 follows that, the Big 12 follows that, the AAC follows that, and the other four leagues fall in some order behind them. (MWC, Conference USA, Sun Belt, MAC, in order?) They might keep inflating certain conferences and deflating others, grouping them into two categories. If that’s the case, it could be bad for the Big 12’s hopes of title relevance. But it could also be good. They could stay above the arbitrary cut line and get more credit than they deserve.
One last thing to keep in mind with this piece: The Big 12 has a big interest in holding onto Oklahoma and Texas for a few more years if they can, partially to smooth this transition. If it turns into Power Four v. Group of Six with a four-team playoff in place, even for one year, that could be hard to break.
What will become of Kansas?
Kansas’s men’s basketball program is one of the few in the country that’s a valuable chip in its own right in the conference realignment game, with its football program either a nice natural cupcake or a liability for a league seeking legitimacy. Will KU leave the Big 12 if Oklahoma and Texas do? I have no idea. But it’s something to keep an eye on, and if you’re curious about the academic piece, since there’s always that narrative surrounding the Big Ten, the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings of national universities have Kansas ahead of Nebraska but behind the rest of the current Big Ten (a note on that narrative: with the exception of Louisville, every ACC school is also ranked ahead of Nebraska, and the ACC’s average ranking is better than that of the Big Ten even if you exclude Notre Dame from the ACC number).
Kansas isn’t a great cultural fit with the Big 12 if the Big 12 loses Oklahoma and Texas, even if geographically it makes sense. It’s liberal, while the remainers are West Virginia, two conservative Christian schools (one more fervently than the other), and a group of ag/tech schools. It’s a basketball school, while I’d imagine the others get more revenue and put more of a focus on football. It’s not a great fit. Which means it might reach out to the Big Ten, and the Big Ten might lick its lips at the possibility of another football program that can be ignored while gaining a notch in the men’s basketball arms race against the ACC.
On that note: What would this mean for Big 12 basketball?
Neither Texas nor Oklahoma is among the Big 12 stalwarts in men’s basketball, but both are routinely competitive, and Texas may have a great season ahead of it with Chris Beard bringing in every noteworthy transfer in the nation like he’s early 2010’s John Calipari but recruiting seniors instead of freshmen. The place this hurts the Big 12 is not on the men’s basketball court, but in the wallet, where men’s basketball won’t be as much of a ratings draw for one particularly sizable fanbase (Texas’s).
On that note: SEC membership must be worth a lot of money.
Oklahoma appears to be passing up perennial playoff appearances in football for the prospect of playing in the SEC, which implies that playing in the SEC is worth more than appearing in the playoff every single year.
And going off of that: Texas leaving would hurt the Big 12 financially.
Texas is the biggest brand in the current league. It has the biggest fanbase. It’s relevant in two massive media markets (Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston). Texas leaving doesn’t hurt the Big 12 competitively in the big name sports, but it rips out a big chunk of cash that other programs, new and remaining, would not be able to efficiently replace.
Who would replace Texas and Oklahoma?
Assuming the Big 12 wouldn’t want to proceed as an eight-team conference (this might not even be allowed under current football rules—I’m not sure what the line is with those), it’s the same old names: BYU, Boise State, Memphis, Houston, Cincinnati, UCF, SMU, etc. Grabbing a four-team chunk of the AAC would be smooth and would bolster the men’s basketball side of things. We’d finally see what kind of FedEx money Memphis really has. And unlike BYU, the addition of Cincinnati would make it more natural for West Virginia to stick around. But it would also add a lot of recent mid-majors to a league struggling to keep its “power conference” title.
What’s West Virginia’s future?
West Virginia is already an oddity geographically in the Big 12, though its competence in the big money sports makes it blend in nicely. If it were to leave, I’d imagine it would have a hard time convincing the Big Ten to take it, given the Big Ten’s tendency towards snootiness and the fact West Virginia ranks 100 spots lower on those university rankings than even Nebraska. The ACC might not have the same qualms, though, and West Virginia would be a natural geographic fit while potentially boosting the league as a football conference (West Virginia’s ceiling these last twenty years has been higher than that of the lion’s share of the ACC). Of course, adding West Virginia to either of those leagues would force an odd number in at least one sport (all sports for the Big Ten, football for the ACC), but at the size they’re at, I’m not sure that’s a real inefficiency.
Would this be happening if Baker Mayfield and Oklahoma had won that Rose Bowl against Georgia?
Oklahoma was extremely close to making the national championship that year, and the team to whom they lost was extremely close to winning the national championship. If Oklahoma won it, would that have legitimized the Big 12 enough to boost its reputation enough to bring enough money in that at least Oklahoma would want to stay, and potentially Texas as well? I’d guess no, but it’s an interesting what-if.
The SEC side of this has some good comedic embarrassments.
Texas A&M looks like the biggest loser on the planet right now, yelling in the highest-pitched, squealiest voice imaginable about not wanting Texas to join like a kid on his way to a swirly from Texas and the SEC’s power brokers. You want the SEC to only have one Texas school? Who are they going to choose?
The reports we get from Knoxville are that certain Tennessee fans have a strange obsession with Texas as well, referring to Tennessee as “the real UT” and making jokes about being orange and about all Texas’s founding fathers coming from Tennessee. The reports we get from Austin are that few Texas fans actively remember the University of Tennessee exists. I hugely doubt Tennessee would in any way stand opposed to this, but it could create some funny moments, especially if Texas can pull it together enough on the gridiron to pulverize Tennessee once a decade or however often they’ll play.
A 16-team league’s football schedule rotation could stink.
Assuming, say, Florida stays in the SEC East, if the division structure stays the same you’re looking at years upon years between Florida playing Oklahoma or Texas, and ditto for so many other games. That said, the expansion to a nine-game schedule would help, and with Oklahoma and Texas coming in and basically saying, “This is all about money,” the revenue of an extra conference game might make a nine-game schedule inevitable even for those who cherish the SEC’s grip on the four-team playoff (again, a twelve-team playoff might also change the dynamics here and make the nine-game schedule more appealing, or at least less scary).
How powerful would Texas be in the new SEC? How powerful would Oklahoma be?
I’m curious how big Oklahoma’s brand is. I’m curious how many years it would be before Texas would say, “We’re the biggest brand here, we want [X,Y,Z].” I’m curious if anyone’s scared of Texas doing that (aside from A&M who just wet its pants and I’m starting to feel bad for this personification I’ve created of A&M).
Ok. The Big 12 side. Starting with Iowa State.
I have some personal fondness for Iowa State, and some personal ties to Iowa State, and something I’ve heard batted around before with these discussions is the fear of Iowa State becoming a mid-major. This was especially scary during the tail end of the Paul Rhoads era, when it was hard to see ISU ever winning more than two conference football games in a year, and the most common outcome being to just beat Kansas. In some ways, this arrives at a good time for Iowa State, or as good a time as it could, with Matt Campbell having the Cyclones competitive in the biggest way they’ve ever been competitive. But the fear looms large, and I’m curious how large it looms for Kansas State, Texas Tech, Baylor, West Virginia, and Oklahoma State (and how annoying it is for recent mid-major graduate TCU).
The Big Ten is theoretically a possibility for Iowa State. The fanbase, I’d gauge, is slightly smaller than that of Iowa, but not massively smaller, and ISU would have two traditional rivals in the Hawkeyes and Nebraska while still sitting above the Cornhuskers in those academic rankings. If Kansas jumps to the Big Ten and the Big Ten wants a 16th, Iowa State might make the most sense of anyone available.
There’s also the possibility this could be good for Iowa State, who, depending how soon this happens, could be the best football program in a power conference for a couple years. That depends on so much—Matt Campbell sticking around, Matt Campbell maintaining his success even after next year’s presumable rebuilding year, Matt Campbell having success this year in the first place, nobody else getting all that good in the meantime, the Big 12 remaining a power conference in a practical sense. But it’s a possibility.
The worst possibility for Iowa State is the Big 12 utterly disbanding, Oklahoma State finding a safe haven somewhere, the Texas schools finding a safe haven somewhere, and Kansas State and Iowa State being forced to do something like join Conference USA. I don’t know how real a possibility this is, and I do think Iowa State and Kansas State could dominate Conference USA and theoretically make a twelve-team playoff a lot of years, at least at the beginning, but this is a big honking fear and something Iowa State and Kansas State should take every means to avoid.
Remembering the Big Eight.
The Big Eight, the league that preceded the Big 12, consisted of Iowa State, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Kansas State, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State. If Oklahoma leaves, that will mean just four of the original eight are left. If Kansas leaves, it’s just the ag schools. This isn’t going-back-to-the-Big-Eight time. The Big Eight has its own diaspora.
Possibility for the Big 12: The Texas League
I think of Oklahoma State as the strongest remaining Big 12 athletic program, at least in the big-money sports, if Texas and Oklahoma leave. I could be wrong on that. I suppose they could be added to this league too. But I wonder if a Texas-and-Oklahoma State-only conference could survive. You’d have six natural members: Texas Tech, Baylor, Oklahoma State, TCU, SMU, and Houston, and then you’d have a few other programs to choose from, with North Texas being the biggest one. Spelling this out, I don’t think it would work. I think they’d still need Iowa State and Kansas State at the very least, and they’d probably want Cincinnati and Memphis and UCF ahead of North Texas and Rice and Texas State/UTEP/UTSA. But always worth counting the number of passable programs in Texas, just in case it’s reached a critical mass, which feels like an inevitability if American civilization persists long enough before crumbling.
What I would guess will happen.
If I had to guess what will happen, I’d guess Texas and Oklahoma do leave for the SEC, and we get maybe one year (2023) in which the four-team playoff overlaps with the new Big 12. I’d guess the new Big 12 stabilizes itself, pillaging the AAC for Cincinnati, Memphis, Houston, and either SMU or UCF, while the AAC pillages Conference USA for perhaps North Texas, Marshall, and Louisiana Tech, and we get a twelve-team Big 12, a ten-team Conference USA, and a ten-team AAC until the next round of realignment starts in earnest. I’d guess the new Big 12 would be good enough in men’s basketball to satisfy Kansas (who I’m also realizing could just give up on football and join the Big East). I’d guess West Virginia would remain relatively content (though perhaps it’s not content right now and I just don’t know).
But I don’t know. There’s a lot of uncertainty. And the possibility of the ACC grabbing West Virginia, the Big Ten grabbing Kansas, and the Pac-12 expanding into Texas and Oklahoma isn’t impossible. (Though one would think they’d seek out Boise State and BYU first, and maybe UNLV and San Diego State or Nevada or…New Mexico? Hawaii? Insert Mountain West football school of your choosing?) We could, ironically, finally get a Power Four after the Power Five/four-team playoff was such a rough pairing for many over these last eight years or so. Maybe the Pac-12 would grab the TCU/Baylor/Texas Tech/Oklahoma State four. Maybe the Big Ten would take Iowa State. Maybe Kansas State would be the one left in the lurch, or perhaps the ACC could call it over there for stability, or perhaps the ACC would grab Cincinnati and it’d still be Kansas State left in the lurch. It’s an uncertain time, and a scary time for the eight Big 12 schools that remain, with the non-West Virginia schools probably holding the most cause for fear. But man. If you like ancient geopolitical conquering narratives, this is fun.
i liked the parts about A&M