Will a 14-team Big 12 Conference play football with divisions?
Berry TramelOklahoman
By pledging to the Southeastern Conference, Texas likely will find itself in a league with Houston.
By pledging to the SEC, OU likely will find itself in a league with Central Florida.
Welcome to the rabbit hole of college football in the third decade of the 21st century. Conference realignment returned in force last summer, with the Sooners’ and Longhorns’ stated defections, but the Big 12 rallied and now is bringing in four new members apparently before OU and Texas can find its way to Dixie.
The American Conference last week announced a financial settlement with Cincinnati, Houston and Central Florida that allows those schools to join the Big 12 next summer, along with Brigham Young.
With OU and Texas still publicly committed to the Big 12 through the 2024-25 academic year, that could mean two full years of a 14-team Big 12.
The Sooners and Longhorns would prefer to leave yesterday, of course, but at least on OU’s end, that’s not yet financially feasible. Maybe, probably, absolutely, UT has $80 million lying around in surplus. But that bounty doesn’t exist in Norman.
OU and Texas will explore every option to leave the Big 12 before 2025. But it seems likely a quick exit isn’t feasible.
For the newlook Big 12, a thousand questions remain unanswered, from championships to payouts to conference leadership, and all points in between.
But the biggest concern for fans will be alignment. Will the Big 12 adopt divisions and remain an outlier among Power 5 conferences?
The Big 12 has been divisionless since the 2011 season. Who knew the beleaguered conference was a pioneer? In recent months, the Pac-12, Big Ten, SEC and Atlantic Coast conferences have either scrapped divisions or admitted they are likely to.
So what will 2023 Big 12 football look like?
“We were the only conference that didn’t have divisions,” said BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe, prematurely embracing the “we,” but he’s got my permission to do so and I assume that’s a Big 12 consensus. And the Big 12’s solo act “might remain that way,” Holmoe said.
Holmoe claims no inside information. He admits to just speculating. But the current (minus OU and Texas) and future Big 12 members have discussed football format.
Sources said divisional play had much momentum early, but the rabbit hole is changing things rapidly.
The other Power 5 leagues are getting away from divisions, preferring to match the top two teams in the standings for a league championship game, to enhance College Football Playoff possibilities.
“As you see conferences get out of divisional alignment, you now see where there’s some pros and cons,” Holmoe said. “Travel could come into play. Who you play and don’t play.”
Adding divisions would create geographic problems for the Big 12. There are no natural splits.
The Big 12 could put the five Southwest schools (OSU and the Texas schools) with BYU and call it the West, or the Big 12 could put the five Southwest schools with UCF and call it the South. Or the Big 12 could just mix it all up and split the four Texas schools 2-2, giving the other members as much exposure as possible in the Lone Star recruiting grounds.
But the scrap-the-divisions movement has given the Big 12 an excellent alternative. If there is no consensus in Big 12 meetings, the league could just keep doing what it’s been doing for the last decade.
“I’m open to either,” said UCF athletic director Terry Mohajir. “The reason people are running away from divisions, they want to be in the best position to get their best teams in the championship game. That may change if it (the CFP) expands.”
That flexibility seems widespread. I’ve talked to people all over the conference and have encountered few people taking an absolute position.
The Big 12 could table divisions initially. Play out the schedule with 14 teams (almost surely a nine-game league slate) and see how it goes. When OU and Texas depart, maybe then adapt divisions, if need be.
The one thing I’ve heard repeatedly is that conference officials don’t want to be changing divisions haphazardly. In other words, if the Big 12 was to adopt divisions immediately, place OU and Texas in opposite divisions, then leave those divisions the same when the Sooners and Longhorns are gone.
“I have opinions, but they’re not based on a lot of great knowledge,” Holmoe said. “I’m in this learning mode. Go north or south or east or west, it’s very difficult to say which would be better.”
Same with going divisionless or with divisions.
This much we know. The Big 12 is not afraid to go against the grain. Sometimes, it even works out.
