Big 12 goes back to 12 schools, creates trickle down
By Todd Fredericks | Jan 16, 2017, 5:17pm EST
“It all started with a strong desire to get back to 12 teams in the Big 12. From there we saw a number of moves that made a lot of sense and despite the number of moving parts there weren't and significant hurdles.” NCAA president Mark Emmert explained as he revealed one of the biggest conference reshuffles ever done.
After deciding that the Big 12 needed to have 12 teams to continue to be considered one of the top conference Emmert says choosing those teams was not much of a challenge.
“Nebraska threw their hat in the ring almost immediately. We reached out to Colorado and the rest just fell into place. Jerry Jones was adamant that the new championship would be in Arlington and he was instrumental in making that happen.”
With Colorado and Nebraska on board for the move that left holes in the Pac 12 and the Big Ten.
“We had a few teams interested in filling both of those holes.” Emmert said. “For the Pac 12 San Diego State made quite a bit of sense so we were able to make that happen pretty easily.”
Things were a bit more complicated with the Big Ten, ultimately the conference decided that allowing Maryland to return to the ACC made the most sense, returning the Big Ten to 12 teams.
“Ideally, over the next few years, we'll get to a point where there are five top conferences with 12 teams each then the five mid level conferences, also with 12 teams. There will be a few independents and those mid level conferences will have an opportunity to move up to the higher conferences if one of those higher level teams is under-performing. Somewhat like the European soccer model. We're not quite ready to dive right into that but we're working on it.”
As for right now the Pac 12, Big Ten and Big 12 look like this:
The next big move was to re-balance the ACC. Wake Forest and Boston College elected to depart after the announcement that Notre Dame would be joining. Maryland and Notre Dame join the Coastal division and the Atlantic division is unaltered.
Wake Forest and Boston College were quickly welcomed in by the American conference. The American conference had also reached a deal bringing Army in as well. East Carolina announced their departure shortly thereafter. The conference re-aligned into a North and South format.
“One of the hurdles there was having to move the date of the Army Navy game into the middle of the season. Nobody was in love with the idea but we agreed to try it for this season at least.”
ECU found a home in the Sun Belt conference.
The Mountain West adds BYU to the Mountain division and Boise State shifts to the West division.
The SEC, MAC and Conference USA stay the same as 2016.
Massachusetts is now the only independent team, though with the upcoming plans to balance conferences they are likely to have company in 2018.
“We're very excited about this.” Emmert concluded. “It's a big change with lot's of moving parts and it took a lot of behind the scenes work by a lot of key individuals to pull this off and to keep it under wraps until we were ready. We're looking forward to this season and beyond with this alignment. It's a big day for NCAA football.”
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