How the Big 12 Should Model Its Football Schedule

It’s all upside down in Big 12 land. In 2024, it will have 16 components, half of which are new to the conference. The league will stretch from Florida to Ohio to Arizona, and there will be no clear-cut top dog or dogs. It’s as reasonably close to a blank canvas of a power conference as you’ll see.

That means some major scheduling changes are on the horizon. Until this season when it ballooned to 14, it could use a beautiful round-robin format with everyone playing everyone else once throughout the year. With 16 teams and only nine games available, that’s no longer possible. And with divisions no longer en vogue, something new is needed.

Earlier this month, I wrote about how the Big Ten and SEC should model their football schedules. The Big Ten is about to include 18 outfits, but the Big 12 will match the SEC at 16. Adopting the same Flex Protect Plus system that I recommended for the SEC makes perfect sense for the Big 12, especially given the league has already played a nine-game schedule for years.

What does this mean? Teams will have three protected opponents that rotate every four years, excluding matchups deemed important enough to guarantee annually. That leaves six unassigned league games, and with 12 conference mates not yet named, they can be the perfect split for home-and-homes that span those four years. The best rivalries remain intact, secondary rivalries can get their due, and four-year players visit every stadium in the conference at least once.

That leads us to the ultimate question: what rivalries should the Big 12 protect?

Big 12 Football Rivalries to Permanently Protect

This is a tough question. The future Big 12 doesn’t make a lot of sense beyond the walls of a boardroom. There are plenty of matchups among the upcoming 16 members that have never been played before. It’s important for the conference to keep hold of the little continuity it has while not unintentionally segregating its league by old and new. It also has to remember that playing games in the Lone Star State will be a big deal for all non-Texas programs, and having trips to Florida and Ohio would be nice for recruiting, too. There’s a lot to balance.

That’s why I’ve elected to only protect seven series in the entire league. Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, UCF, and Colorado wouldn’t have any permanent rivals if I had my way, allowing them to cycle freely among fresh faces. Everyone else has at least one team they’ll see every season. Kansas State and Baylor are the only programs with two forever foes.

These are my permanently protected Big 12 rivalries:

There are more rivalries in the Big 12 that I could have protected, like any number of the old Big 8 connections or any of the Texas schools against one another. I could have tried creating compelling series and rivalries by protecting them, like Utah-Colorado or Arizona-Texas Tech. But that would have limited how much these teams got to meet with the rest of the league, and I feel that balanced schedules and opponent rotation should be prioritized. Under my model, these series will still be played in at least half of all seasons, even more in some cases.

Here is an example of how the Big 12 could protect its pairings for 2024 through 2027, the first four years of this model’s necessity (permanent opponents italicized):

UCF: Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas

West Virginia: Cincinnati, Iowa State, Kansas State

Cincinnati: West Virginia, UCF, Houston

Iowa State: Kansas State, Kansas, West Virginia

Kansas: Kansas State, Iowa State, UCF

Kansas State: Kansas, Iowa State, West Virginia

Oklahoma State: Baylor, TCU, Colorado

Baylor: TCU, Houston, Oklahoma State

TCU: Baylor, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State

Houston: Baylor, Cincinnati, UCF

Texas Tech: Arizona, Arizona State, TCU

Utah: BYU, Colorado, Arizona

BYU: Utah, Arizona State, Colorado

Colorado: Utah, Oklahoma State, BYU

Arizona: Arizona State, Texas Tech, Utah

Arizona State: Arizona, Texas Tech, BYU

Translating those relationships over onto what the conference schedules would actually look like, here are some examples of how a few of the Big 12’s brethren could spend the next eight years:

Texas Tech

West Virginia

Kansas State

It would be foolish for the Big 12 to let its new opportunities of Utah-BYU, Arizona-Arizona State, and Cincinnati-West Virginia go to waste, but only the most vital of rivalries are ensured annual annuity in my guide. With so much rotation in the schedules, those left unprotected still come around often. For example, Texas Tech might spend years without playing all three of the other Lone Star schools, but it would never go longer than two seasons apart from any one of them. And with three slots open for four-year guarantees, there’s no way Texas Tech would be starved of in-state competition. Besides, it’s about the same distance from Lubbock to Houston as Lubbock to Boulder.

Speaking of distances, doing things this way can mean a fair bit of travel, particularly for the teams located on both ends of the footprint. Comparatively, a model that doesn’t prioritize everyone having home-and-homes with everyone in a reasonable amount of time would ease the burden. But with the low likelihood of the Big 12 ever pairing West Virginia and Arizona State or UCF and Colorado as four-year companions, these huge trips would only occur once per stadium per four seasons under my system. If these conferences cared about travel logistics, I wouldn’t be writing this article.

Allowing for general flexibility in the protected relationships means the league can elevate the organic rivalries that form from whoever rises to the top of the pile. If in five years, Kansas State and Baylor are the conference’s cream of the crop, the Big 12 could promise itself and its media partners that marquee matchup for four straight years, then move on to the next big thing when necessary. Similarly, it opens the door for matchups with some history and storylines behind them, like Utah-TCU, Cincinnati-Houston, and Arizona-Texas Tech, and get more play – at a minimum, you know you’ll play every member of the conference a minimum of four times in any given 10-year period.

Passion breeds interest, and teams must know one another for there to be meaning beyond the game. That’s what drives people to attend and watch sports in huge numbers. For the Big 12 to succeed, it will need to assimilate its new half quickly. The longer it weirds people out that Iowa State is playing a conference game in Orlando, the harder it will be for the league to hold its footing. Only through repetition can the Big 12 hope to make Arizona State at Cincinnati seem normal.