Big 12 College Football Expansion: What Schools Should Be Next?

Last year at this around this exact time, what were all the college football types talking about?

The Big 12 media days were coming up, and two things mattered. 1) It was the last year with Texas and Oklahoma before the two anchor tenants in the mall moved to a better location. And 2) there was a buzz over the newbies coming in.

BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF got the call up to the show, bringing a new energy and excitement that’s still around a year later despite the mediocre seasons from those four.

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Remembering all the way back to 2023, what appeared to be the Big 12’s next move?

Maybe UConn would come in and help create the greatest basketball conference in the history of mankind, especially if the Big 12 could get a San Diego State and/or a UNLV, too.

All this was happening as the Pac-12 was about to get ready for its own media days.

What would the new TV deal be? It might not be a whopper, but no one was really all that worried. Of COURSE it would all be okay - it was the Pac-12.

Certainly no one had the imagination to envision one of the most impressive own goal meltdowns in the history of sports business.

Again, remember how everyone was thinking about the Big 12. If everything broke right, there was a shot it could bring back Colorado. Arizona and Utah, though, appeared to be more than happy with the Pac-12 branding and affiliation, Arizona State certainly wasn’t going anywhere, and …

(Cue the 2023 Oppenheimer mushroom cloud)

Okay, Big 12. What did you learn from everything that happened over the last 12 months?

Big 12, DON’T … STOP … EXPANDING.

The Big Ten is the Big Ten. It can do whatever it wants, and it showed. When it was time to quit screwing around, it made a few phone calls and Washington and Oregon were in. That’s not the Big 12. It has to keep working, and why?

The SEC is lurking.

Everyone likes to yell at me when I bring this up, but the SEC totally and completely gacked in the last round of expansion. (Seriously, wait until Alabama figures out how much Purdue will make.)

Getting Oklahoma and Texas was great, but that didn’t exactly expand the footprint - the SEC should’ve gone after Washington and Oregon, and it really messed up by not grabbing Arizona, Arizona State, and Colorado.

Meanwhile, the Big Ten went coast-to-coast, and now it owns LA, the Pacific Northwest, the northeast part to the nation, and a whole lot of big places in between.

The ACC made the brilliant move of getting Cal and Stanford to expand the brand, and SMU is essentially playing in its new conference for free.

Making things even more interesting, despite all the Twitter/X stuff you might hear, and the hurt feelings from jilted fans, the ACC and Big 12 schools aren’t going anywhere.

Oh sure, some lawyers will give it a shot, and some schools will keep pretending to fight to make the alumni happy, but nope.

So here’s the problem. There’s really nowhere else for the SEC to go if it can’t poach ACC and Big 12 teams.

There are just a handful of schools that make a wee bit of sense for the SEC and ACC, and the Big 12 has to get there first, so …

Big 12 expansion: What schools should be next?

You can’t have enough properties on the Monopoly board. Again, the Big 12 needs to keep getting bigger, stronger, and better.

The current configuration of 16 schools might not be too happy to divide the pie further at first, but the available schools to go after can be had for scraps - the Group of Five deals are couch cushion change.

Go from 16 to 20, or better yet, 22, and create two divisions of 11.

You have Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah now. Big 12 - go get southern California and grab San Diego State .

Everyone wants to hold their big sporting events in Vegas - go get UNLV and then you have the hub of all things Big 12. It makes perfect sense, and it twists the knife that much more into what would’ve been the Pac-12’s dream home base.

School size, Tampa, being in the Florida market, natural rival for UCF - the Big 12 should’ve added USF yesterday.

And yeah, enough letting them dangle. Big 12, go do the Oregon State and Washington State thing already - they’re both terrific fits for the Big 12, and they're the two Power Five schools available.

Memphis ? Yeah, makes a little bit of sense. UConn ? No real help in football, but after being ghosted by the league before, the hoops side is too good. Boise State ? Sure, if you’re getting Washington State.

Notre Dame ? Please. If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

So as we dive into the Big 12 media days, keep asking and keep pressing what’s next. After what they pulled off last year, listen to the Big 12 types when they give their wish list.