Big 12 – The Zion Chronicle

As a BYU fan, the news on Wednesday that the Big 12 was openly exploring candidates to expand by 2 or 4 teams in the near future was very exciting. For years I’ve hoped that BYU could get into the Big 12 and there could never be a more obvious opportunity for them to do so than this. I have long believed (and possibly even publicly stated – I can’t remember right now) that the Big 12 needed to get to 14 members, both to be level with the SEC and Big Ten and also to have some wiggle room if the power conference landscape shifts in the future.

Looking at the current landscape I identified what I believe to be a very good expansion scenario. Here are the four schools I think they should add as full conference members (in order of strongest to weakest addition).

With yesterday’s rule change on holding conference championships the Big 12 has an opportunity to get their “13th data point” but they can structure it so that they only hold a championship when they don’t have a clear champion already. The way to do that would be to only hold a championship game when the team with the best conference record doesn’t have at least a two game lead in both their conference record and their overall record. (They might make an exception to the two game rule if the conference leader either lost to the team two games behind them or won on their home field.)

The two game rule means that most years they would be holding a championship game but it allows them to avoid a trap game for their conference champion when they already have a clear winner. (That 13th data point doesn’t mean much when 12-0/9-0 #1 team beats 9-3/7-2 #2 team again but it sure hurts the whole conference if they lose.)