The Big 12 conference took action amid Texas and Oklahoma leaving. On Friday, the conference officially invited four teams to become members – BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and Central Florida (UFC). The four teams were “approved unanimously by the eight continuing members,” and individual boards will formally accept later Friday, according to ESPN.
The move comes shortly after Texas and Oklahoma announced they are joining the SEC by July 1, 2025, leaving the conference with just eight schools. This led to the Big 12 forming a subcommittee that concluded Cincinnati, Houston and UCF were the top choices to join after what they have done in the American Athletic Conference. BYU currently plays as an independent and will likely join by the 2023-2024 season. The other three programs will likely join by July 1, 2024, according to Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby.
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“I certainly wouldn’t foreclose on any of the institutions coming in as early as July 1 [in 2023],” Bowlsby told ESPN who also mentioned that further expansion is possible. “We’re always going to be open to new opportunities as they present themselves. We’re living in a very fast-changing athletic environment, and we will be at 14 for a while, we will drop back to 12, and as there are targets of opportunity or as there are situations that dictate that we change composition, we’ll be prepared to do those things.”
If Cincinnati, Houston and UCF decided to leave the AAC, they would have to give the conference a 27-month notice and pay a $10 million buyout fee. BYU is an independent in football, but the other sports play in the West Coast Conference. This is a big step for the Big 12 as the conference looks to be a player in the potential College Football Playoff Expansion.
“It’s a relative certainty that we will expand the playoff at some point in time,” Bowlsby said. “Whether it’ll be a 12-team playoff or whether it’ll be an eight-team playoff or whether it’ll come in Year 11 [of the television contract] or whether it’ll come in Year 13, those things are yet to be determined by the board of managers. “I think that these are very high-quality football programs that are additive to the Big 12 and have the capability, especially with an array of stronger opponents within the conference, we have an opportunity to demonstrate how we can play at the national level.”
