Bob Bowlsby: Losing Oklahoma and Texas Hurts, But New Big 12 is Trending 'Exceedingly Well'

At the league's annual spring business meetings, Big 12 brass was treated to an "outstanding" branding presentation that painted a promising picture for the future.

IRVING, TX — The Big 12 Conference is moving ahead with its new membership at an appropriately measured yet convincing pace.

And yet, the league is trying to navigate what life will look like without Oklahoma and Texas as its flagship brands.

“You don’t just move on without any impact of losing an Oklahoma and Texas,” outgoing commissioner Bob Bowlsby said Thursday during day two of the league’s annual spring business meetings at the Four Seasons Resort and Club. “But I think we’ve done exceedingly well with our four new members.”

Bowlsby and the Big 12’s joint leaders — presidents, chancellors, athletic directors, senior women’s administrators and faculty athletic representatives — met with marketing and branding firm LDWW for almost two hours Thursday, a meeting that Bowlsby called “hectic” but “outstanding” and put forth a promising future without the Sooners and Longhorns.

“It was the only presentation I’ve seen of its kind where they got applause at the end of it,” Bowlsby said. “And so that says a lot. And our group is sort of jaded, as you know. It takes a lot to get ‘em to cheer.”

What made it outstanding, Bowlsby said, was the “technical aspects, creative aspects, and the storylines were excellent.”

LDWW has collaborated with the Big 12 for almost a decade, but this year’s spring meetings — with OU and Texas departing (supposedly in 2025), and BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston arriving (supposedly in 2023), and Bowlsby retiring — just feel different.

And in this case, Bowlsby said, different is good.

“What we found out, in large measure, was both inside the Big 12 footprint and outside the Big 12 footprint, our membership going forward is viewed very positively,” he said. “We did a lot of slicing and dicing of the data based on demographics, and the new conference alignment really tests well with both people inside the Big 12 footprint and outside in the 18-44 age range. That's a very positive perspective on that. Of course, that's tomorrow's fans.”

While acknowledging the challenge of losing OU and Texas, Bowlsby praised the virtues of each of the four newcomers.

“I think BYU,” he said, “is perhaps, with the exception of Notre Dame, they have the biggest worldwide reach of any university in the country and have been a traditional power and played perennially in the top 25 in football.

“You look at Cincinnati, they’re in one of the best football areas of the country — Ohio-Pennsylvania is terrific. … I think Cincinnati’s really got an opportunity to get a foothold.

“In the case of Orlando, the state of Florida, it’s second only to Texas in terms of the quality of the football talent you can recruit there. They’ve got three major universities, but Central Florida has competed and will continue to compete, and they’re in a very rich recruiting area.

“And Houston, they were in the Final Four a year ago, they’ve competed well in a lot of sports over a long period of time, and from a football standpoint, they’re in arguably the best county for football talent in the entire country.

“So I just really feel like we will help them grow and they will help us grow.”

Bowlsby said BYU has told the Big 12 the Cougars “intend to defer to us” on BYU TV, “and I think eventually we’ll roll their ESPN package into the Big 12 package. We haven’t had those discussions yet (with ESPN), but we will.”

Having two more schools in the Eastern Time Zone, adding one in the Mountain Time Zone, and bringing in one from the nation’s fourth-largest population hub in the second-most populous state will be significant.

“One of the things that’s good,” he said, “is we’re gonna be the only conference in three time zones. That’ll help us from a media window standpoint.”