Ok, so it seems that…
- Nobody knows when BYU will join the Big 12.
- Nobody knows when the three AAC schools (Houston, Cincinnati, UCF) will join the Big 12.
- Nobody knows when the 12-team college football playoff will start, or if that’s even the plan anymore.
- It’s possible the Big 12 expansion effort could still blow up, but it doesn’t seem likely.
While we wait, then…let’s talk men’s basketball.
At some point, it currently appears, we’ll get a Big 12 in basketball that looks like this, with each program’s average final KenPom ranking over the last nine years (the duration of the current Big 12 alignment) in parentheses:
- Kansas (10.0)
- Baylor (19.9)
- Cincinnati (39.8)
- West Virginia (40.1)
- Oklahoma State (47.9)
- BYU (50.9)
- Iowa State (53.4)
- Kansas State (59.7)
- Texas Tech (69.2)
- Houston (76.4)
- TCU (109.8)
- UCF (131.2)
For reference, the league will have said goodbye to these two programs:
- Oklahoma (35.8)
- Texas (46.2)
These numbers, of course, don’t tell the full story. Baylor and Houston just played in the Final Four, and neither shows signs of major imminent regression. BYU and Texas Tech have surged in recent years, though Texas Tech’s rise may be stamped out by the departure of Chris Beard. Perpendicularly, Texas is supposed to be very good this year because of the arrival of Chris Beard (and all those transfer signings). A back-of-the-envelope power of the program list for those fourteen schools would arguably look as follows (with that KenPom ranking, in this context, in parentheses):
- Kansas (1)
- Baylor (2)
- Texas (6)
- Houston (12)
- West Virginia (5)
- BYU (8)
- Texas Tech (11)
- Oklahoma (3)
- Oklahoma State (7)
- Iowa State (9)
- Kansas State (10)
- Cincinnati (4)
- TCU (13)
- UCF (14)
It’s important not to misconstrue this development in either direction. Yes, the Big 12 is losing two consistently solid programs. But in terms of on-court quality, Houston and BYU might match those collectively. The Big 12 is also not actively improving in men’s basketball, though, or doesn’t appear to be. They’re basically just adding some kibble for their big dogs in the form of UCF and possibly Cincinnati while trading out a comparable pair of programs winning-wise in Oklahoma/Texas for Houston/BYU. Might UCF surge here and there? Certainly. But they also might not. They are, one would guess, the least likely program of these fourteen to do anything big in the next decade or so. It’s an even swap. Plus a little kibble.
There’s an argument to adding kibble to a conference’s basketball diet. The ACC’s best benefit from getting to play a few legitimately bad teams every year. So do the Big Ten’s big guns. It helps to not be below .500 in league play. Or overall, for that matter. More: By adding a few teams, the stupid-but-prevalent “how many teams did each conference put in the tournament” metric becomes kinder to the Big 12 by sole virtue of the numbers game. There’s even an aesthetic here regarding conference tournaments. Often in the Big 12, we see bubble play-in games from the get-go. Here, we’ll get something more like what the Big Ten and ACC put on, in which bubble teams play no-upside, disaster-aversion games to open while setting the stage for more titanic clashes down the line.
The SEC will benefit from this, getting deeper towards the top, and should Chris Beard eventually jump from Texas to Kentucky, it’ll be all the more spiteful a situation should it happen when Texas has played a few SEC seasons. But really, this matters more for the Big 12, which basically now tries to pair Big East-style basketball with Pac-12-style football—a deep league on the hardwood, a desperate league on the gridiron. Is it going to work? We don’t know. But it’s about the best the conference could do short of entirely splitting up, which was evidently something the ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12 weren’t interested in facilitating.
Thankfully, there does sound to be a scenario in which we get a year of overlap between at least BYU and Oklahoma/Texas, and possibly a season of all fourteen of these teams. Should these happen, it would be glorious, not least of all because one would assume Chris Beard would still be doing his thing at Texas at that point and the Big 12 could finally fulfill its destiny by comprising half of the Sweet Sixteen. But overall, it’s about that destination, which one would guess all parties will be interested in reaching sooner rather than later, if for no other reason than mankind’s gargantuan revulsion to feeling awkward. So, we might not get those overlaps.
A few other thoughts:
- BYU seems likely to travel very well.
- Keeping Kansas in the league is enormous if that continues to hold.
- Kansas City still makes sense for the Big 12 Tournament…right? I can’t think of anywhere that makes more sense.
- The Big 12 is really banking on good football from UCF, trading better basketball and shorter travel times from Memphis to get it. (Memphis has gotta have some skeletons in its closet, right? That’s why they keep getting passed up?)
- I may have been unkind to Cincinnati above, or perhaps too charitable to Bruce Weber and T.J. Otzelberger.
- Chris Beard’s roster’s impressive this season, but can he do it again next year? And Shaka Smart had the Longhorns ranked comparably high at times. Anyway, if Beard does make Texas a powerhouse, that’ll hurt the Big 12, which has sometimes lacked that power up top.
- The future composition of the AAC is now interesting, with Memphis and Wichita State remaining but not a lot else especially promising.
- Going back to Kansas for a minute: It’s possible this will blow up not because these teams don’t join the Big 12, but because the Big Ten swoops in and grabs the Jayhawks (and potentially Iowa State…?) or because the Pac-12 makes a move on someone or because UNC and Duke sidle up to Kansas and asks if Kansas is thinking what they’re thinking. There’s also the possibility of some NCAA disintegration, which sounds extreme but…*waves hand at the coronavirus and certain other things that taught us to never say never* Basically, we might never see this league in action, even if we get through these next few weeks on course for it. Things might happen. Things always might happen.
