College football realignment: Big 12 to accept new members for 2023 season, per report

We could see a 14-member Big 12 as soon as the 2023 college football season.

College football conference realignment is in the air, with Houston, Cincinnati, and UCF planning to leave the AAC for the Big 12 in time for the 2023 academic year, according to a report from CBS Sports.

That timeline runs in line with the original speculation that the schools, which announced a move to the Big 12 last year, will change conferences in time for the 2023 football season.

The schools are working with the notion that the upcoming 2022-23 season will be their last in the AAC.

This new report comes as negotiations for the move to the Big 12 remain ongoing, according to The Athletic. Those talks are expected to end in the next few weeks in time for the schools to join the Big 12 in time for next season.

BYU, the fourth incoming member of the new Big 12, is scheduled to join the conference in time for the 2023 season as well.

If all goes according to the current plan, the Big 12 will have 14 members through the summer of 2025, when the current grant of rights expires and Texas and Oklahoma are expected to move to the SEC.

Those two college football powerhouses leaving for the nation's best conference set off a domino effect of league realignment, but exact dates remain unknown.

There were reports that OU and Texas could leave the Big 12 early, but doing so before the 2025 date would be costly. 

How costly? According to most reports, the estimated exit fee to leave the conference could run as high as $75 million per school.

That number might be high enough to halt the process of leaving for the SEC for another few years. During that time, we could see some games between Oklahoma and Texas against BYU, Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston.

Their departure marked another high-profile exodus from the Big 12. Nebraska left for the Big Ten, Colorado for the Pac-12, and Texas A&M and Missouri departed for the SEC all in the last decade.

(h/t CBS Sports' Jon Rothstein)

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