What the Big 12 Could Look Like with Two Divisions

A new look Big 12 is just around the corner.

The Big 12 Conference will have 16 members beginning in 2024-25, thanks to the recent additions of Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah. With that many schools, we'll likely see the league split into divisions for football. The ACC, Big Ten, and SEC, all of whom have 15+ members, have two divisions for football.

So assuming Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark goes to a two division look, there are two ways I can see this going.

Scenario 1 - East and West

It's not going to be true east, west considering most schools are in the western part of the country, but I think we all know geography doesn't matter all that much in conference realignment. Here, the three schools that are actually in the Eastern Time zone (Cincinnati, UCF, and West Virginia) are grouped with the Kansas schools, Oklahoma State, and the most eastern Texas school, Houston.

Figuring out the west was pretty easy. It's the "old" PAC 12 schools mixed in with "original" Big 12 schools Baylor, TCU, Texas Tech and one of the newbies, BYU.

EAST

Central Florida, Cincinnati, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, West Virginia.

WEST

Arizona, Baylor, Arizona State, BYU, Colorado, TCU, Texas Tech, Utah

Scenario 2 - North and South

If Yormark wants to take full advantage of being in four time zones, this is probably the route they'll want to go. Although the teams aren't exactly positioned close to one another, you can have Cincinnati or WVU playing out in Colorado while in the other division you have one of the Arizona schools coming across the map to play UCF.

NORTH

BYU, Cincinnati, Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Utah, West Virginia

SOUTH

Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, Central Florida, Houston, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech

Personally, I'm more of a fan of Scenario 1 because the travel makes more sense and it's nothing that WVU hasn't done before. Of course they'll still have two cross division games, but that's not all that bad.

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