How Utah ended up in the Big 12, and what the future looks like in its new conference

It’s officially official.

As of Aug. 2, Utah is a member of the Big 12 Conference.

Despite getting a taste of their new conference last month during football media days in Las Vegas, the Utes didn’t officially become members of the Big 12 until Friday, one day after the Pac-12 Conference’s grant of rights expired.

After the collapse of the Pac-12, Utah’s first Power Five conference home, the Utes start a new journey in the Big 12 this month.

Here’s how the Utes got here, and what’s in store for them in their new conference home.

How the Pac-12 collapsed

More than a decade ago, it was Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott on the offensive, trying to expand into a 16-team superconference and effectively kill the Big 12 Conference in the process.

Scott’s plan was to invite Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado to the current 10-team conference. Colorado accepted, concerned that the Big 12 might collapse, but when the other schools decided to stay in the Big 12, the Buffaloes needed a geographic partner.

Utah had been on the Pac-12′s radar during expansion, with athletic director Chris Hill staying in contact with Scott throughout the process, and once it was clear that the other five schools were staying in the Big 12, the Utes got the call, moving from the Mountain West Conference to the Pac-12.

After significant football success in the Mountain West Conference, including undefeated seasons in 2004 and 2008 where they crashed the BCS, Utah finally got a seat at the table.

Utah’s addition to the Pac-12 in 2011 was the pronouncement that the Utes had finally arrived in the college football world.

The effects, for both the athletic program and the university, were substantial.

The $1.2 million per year in television rights money from the Mountain West Conference transformed to $21 million per year from the Pac-12 Conference, which was a record-breaking TV rights deal at the time.

Donations from boosters increased upon Utah’s arrival in the Pac-12, and in 2013, the $32 million, 150,000-square-foot Spence and Cleone Eccles Football Center opened, providing the football team with a state-of-the-art facility. Other facilities were built — one for the basketball team, one for the ski team, one for the golf team — and several others were refreshed and expanded, including the tennis facility and gymnastics facility.

Rice-Eccles Stadium was expanded for the first time since 1998, growing to 51,444 seats and debuting a revamped south end zone and new locker rooms.

Academically, the university benefited from the Pac-12 Conference, seeing increases of hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding alongside the benefits of being partners with prestigious universities like Stanford, Cal and UCLA, all while enrollment grew.

The quality of athletes in every sport increased, and after a few rough years during the transition from a Group of Five conference to a Power Five conference, teams started winning conference titles, starting with gymnastics in 2014. Gymnastics won six Pac-12 championships in its time in the conference, along with four regular-season crowns.

Other sports that won Pac-12 championships include baseball, softball, women’s basketball and men’s tennis. Utah’s ski team also won five national championships.

After years of being close, including losing back-to-back Pac-12 football championships in 2018 and 2019, the Utes finally broke through and reached the Pac-12 summit, winning consecutive titles in 2021 and 2022.

Thanks in part to the boost in recruiting from being a Pac-12 member, Kyle Whittingham built a program that has seen constant success and has appeared in the College Football Playoff Top 25 in every year except 2020.

“Pac-12 was instrumental in building the program, not just beneficial,” Whittingham said last year. “Having that Pac-12 moniker on your shirt and that conference affiliation ramped up everything in this program — facilities, recruiting, budget, salaries, everything. Making the move to Power Five was a game-changer for the program, for the university, for the community, in my opinion.”

Utah had thought it had found a long term conference home, and fans loved the Pac-12. Big-time venues like the LA Memorial Coliseum, Autzen Stadium and Husky Stadium, combined with Los Angeles, the Oregon Coast, Seattle and the Bay Area as travel destinations, meant there was always a large contingent of Utah fans at every road venue.

But the only constant in the modern age of college athletics is change, and change struck again in 2021.

Just as Texas and Oklahoma’s rebuke of joining the Pac-12 was instrumental for Utah to join the conference in 2010, a decade later, the two schools set in motion more big realignment changes.

In 2021, the Longhorns and Sooners agreed to bolt from the Big 12 to the SEC, and the Big 12 Conference saved itself, yet again, by adding BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston that same year to keep the league afloat.

In 2022, the Big Ten made moves to make its own superconference in response to the SEC’s additions, prying USC and UCLA away from the Pac-12. The Big 12 beat the Pac-12 to the media rights punch, securing a nearly $2.3 billion media deal with ESPN and Fox that reportedly will pay out $31.6 million per year to each of its schools when it takes effect in 2025.

Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff, who had turned down a $30 million per school per year offer from ESPN early on in realignment, scrambled for a deal. TV networks had plenty of inventory with the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC, and weren’t interested in ponying up more for the depleted Pac-12 with no Los Angeles TV market.

The best the conference could muster up was primarily an Apple TV subscription-based streaming media deal, which offered less base money than the Big 12′s linear TV deal, and some schools didn’t even show up for Kliavkoff’s pitch. Colorado left for the Big 12 before the presentation.

Soon after the presentation, Washington and Oregon agreed to join the Big Ten, and just like that, the 108-year-old Pac-12 was done for.

Utah, Arizona and Arizona State followed Colorado to the Big 12, while Cal and Stanford eventually agreed to join the ACC. Oregon State and Washington State were left out in the cold, and currently carry the Pac-12 (or Pac-2) banner, setting up a football scheduling agreement with the Mountain West Conference and one with the WCC for other sports.

Looking towards the future in the Big 12

If Utah had its druthers, it would have stayed in the Pac-12, save for a call from the Big Ten or SEC (which wasn’t coming). But after Oregon and Washington bolted, their hand was forced.

Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark called the addition of the “Four Corners” schools the “‘A’ scenario for us when we thought about realignment”, and for Utah, it was a sigh of relief that the Utes had found a landing spot.

The Utes will have some familiar faces from the Pac-12, reignite rivalries with BYU and TCU, and have a chance to continue its upward trajectory as a football program with a virtually guaranteed bid to the newly-expanded College Football Playoff if it wins the Big 12.

Unlike in 2011, when the votes were cast by Utah’s Board of Trustees to join the Big 12, there was no “Big 12 Day” proclamation, no exuberant celebrations from the Utah faithful, and no appearances of Utah Big 12 stickers on cars.

Considering the alternatives — the ACC, which has tremendous uncertainty right now, or being conferenceless like Washington State and Oregon State, the Big 12 was a tremendous landing spot, even if it wasn’t the one Utah envisioned a decade ago.

While for the first time in school history, Utah moving conferences is, at best, a lateral move in football, there is excitement as the Utes move into their new home.

“The University of Utah is very excited to be a member of the Big 12. Very good football conference. Good teams. Good coaches. Good players. New challenge for us. New opportunities for us,” Whittingham said.

TCU just played for a national championship two years ago, and four current Big 12 teams finished the 2023 season ranked in the final Associated Press Top 25.

While Utah was predicted to win the Big 12 in its inaugural season in the conference, it should be a fun race between the Utes and contenders Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Arizona and Iowa State.

“I think we’re ready to roll. I think we’re really excited about it … We’ve got an incredible veteran team, I think that’s seen it all. It’s done it all. Triumph, tragedy, everything in between,” Utah athletic director Mark Harlan said.

“But what I’ve really appreciated, particularly flying with the guys yesterday and really digging in with them is how excited they are. They’re always excited to compete, but just new teams, new faces, watching them hang out in the lounge over there, meeting new people.”

The road games are farther away, but many of the Big 12 stadiums have atmospheres not seen at places like Cal, Stanford and UCLA — though Oregon, Washington and others provided top-notch game day experiences in the Pac-12.

“One thing that’s really true about the Big 12, the commissioner alluded to it in the football space, is you got full venues in almost every sport. And that wasn’t always the case where we’re coming from. And so I think any student at this level wants to compete, even if it’s on the road,” Harlan said.

Utah will also receive more money than it did in the Pac-12 — close to $50 million “all in” per year from the Big 12 , according to the Action Network’s Brett McMurphy — with about $32 million annually coming from the conference’s media deal.

The Big 12′s TV payouts lag far behind the two most prominent conferences, the SEC and Big Ten, but will pay out more than the Pac-12′s old — or proposed — deal would have, and the Utes will still play on big TV networks like Fox, ABC and ESPN.

One of the biggest changes as it pertains to Utah in the new media deal is the lack of a conference TV network. The Pac-12 had the Pac-12 Network, which showed sports like women’s soccer and gymnastics, but with the Big 12, those broadcasts will be produced in house and broadcast on ESPN+.

“I would say of all the changes that we’re managing, that one is probably the most awesome in terms of what it can be and will be, but also one of the most challenging,” Harlan said.

“And to your point, for 12 years, the Pac-12 Network produced games, they produced content, shows, all of that. That’s not the case here. We have an opportunity now and an expectation to do 50 live events Year 1, and that doubles in Year 2 and going forward. So we’ve got an interim plan. We’ve got some trucks that we’re going to have, they’re going to have the Utes marked on it. Bill (Riley), along with other great individuals have been recruited in to generate content, do these games.”

While the Big 12 might be a lateral move in football, it’s a huge step up in men’s basketball.

Two of the last four national titles were won by Big 12 teams, Kansas and Baylor, and five teams finished the season in the AP Top 25. It’s considered the best league in the sport, and will be a huge test for Craig Smith’s squad in 2024-25.

Utah will welcome Arizona, BYU, Houston, Kansas and Kansas State for marquee games at the Huntsman Center this season.

“Challenging basketball conference, both on the men and the women’s side, certainly the men … I love what Craig has said about it, like competitors want to compete,” Harlan said. “And so looking at the schedule, we’re going to be at a lot of tough places. We’re going to have incredible teams coming in like Kansas. I think that’s really exciting for our roster.”

Friday marks the beginning of a new chapter in Utah Athletics history, and after the realignment craziness of last year, the Utes are embracing their new home.