The Realignment That Wasn't: The Big 12 in 2016
About this episode
The episode revisits the Big 12's failed expansion attempts in 2016 and their implications for college football.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.splitzoneduo.com Host emeritus Steven Godfrey joins Richard and Alex for a look back at the Big 12’s extremely public flirtation with expansion a full decade ago. It was a strange spring and summer in 2016, as the Big 12 basically put on realignment tryouts for a long list of schools including several (BYU, UCF, Houston, and Cincinnati) who did get into the conference — but not until years later, when others dominoes had fallen. Let’s revisit the summer of realignment that wasn’t, and then let’s think about how it changed the next decade of college football. In this episode: * 0:00: Why the realignment fashion show became so public * 8:10: The now-quaint factors that drove realignment decisions back then * 12:28: The candidate pool, including Houston and Cincinnati’s very different campaigns, BYU’s many complications, UCF before the Scott Frost/Josh Heupel run, and SMU before it became an ACC playoff team * 32:02: Why the process came down to BYU, Cincinnati, and Houston. (Also, why the Big 12 was genuinely scared of Houston) * 43:48: Counterfactuals: whether earlier expansion would have changed Texas and…
Topics covered
- Big 12 expansion
- college football realignment
- historical analysis
- conference dynamics
- impact of realignment
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