A Jersey Guy: AAC, Pac-12 ready to pounce?

The Big 12 is about to become the Big 8 without Oklahoma and Texas, but the chances of the conference surviving are dwindling.

No one is saying things officially, but make no mistake, the impending defection of Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12 to the Southeastern conference has created some seismic movement throughout the world of college football.

  The Big 12 has two choices. 

It can re-stock, looking for inventory to replace Oklahoma and Texas,  rebuilding to at least 10 schools or it can make a major move and add two, four, six or 8 schools to reach the 16-team super conference level.

The Big 12 had a chance to expand a few years ago and chose to maintain the status quo, a ;move which was made from a position of strength.

That no longer exists.

The Big 12 is vulnerable and predators--the Big Ten, Pac-12 and most significantly the American Athletic Conference--are ready to strike.

The AAC is not a Power 5 conference, but Commissioner Mike Aresco has been vocal about elevating his conference's status.

Sources in the AAC say Aresco has been working the phones and the zoom  call network constantly for the past several days, putting together  a deal that will be more proactive, rather than reactive.

The AAC is currently and 11 member group in football: 

Cincinnati, East Carolina, Houston, Memphis, Navy, SMU, Temple, Tulane, Tulsa, UCF and USF.

The master plan is to pick off 5 Big 12 teams: Texas Tech, TCU, Kansas, West Virginia (or Oklahoma State) and Kansas.

That league would include power bases in the fertile recruiting areas of Texas and Florida, a presence in the Northeast, Midwest and Southwest, truly an American conference.

The other danger for the Big 12 could come from the Pac-12, which could expand into a 20 team, two division super conference.

The new Pac-20 would be:

West

1. UCLA 2. USC 3. Arizona 4. Arizona State 5. Cal 6. Stanford  7. Washington 8. Washington State 9. Oregon 10. Oregon State

East

1, Colorado 2. Utah. 3. TCU 4. Baylor. 5. Texas Tech 6. Oklahoma State 7. Kansas State

8. West Virginia 9. Iowa State. 10. Kansas.

Or it could do a cross over of  5 four team pods which would look like this:

Pod 1

Oregon, Oregon State  Washington State, Wasington.

Pod 2

Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC

Pod 3

Arizona, Arizona Sate, Utah Colorado

Pod 4

Baylor, TCU, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State

Pod 5

Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, West Virginia

All of this could be in place by the fall of 2022, which would put the Atlantic Coast Conference,  Big 10  in  a scramble mode..

How quickly and if the other conferences react will determine the final outcome, but changes are coming.