Big 12 extends membership invitations to four schools

Less than two months after the announcement that the Big 12 would be losing its two biggest brands, the conference officially extended invitations to four new members on Friday morning.

The Big 12 Conference Board of Directors invited BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston to what was going to become an eight-team league following the departure of Oklahoma and Texas for the SEC.

Beginning late morning, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Big 12 Board of Directors chairman and Texas Tech president Lawrence Schovanec and other campus representatives will host video conferences with each of the four schools. The full schedule can be found here.

The schools had been in the process of applying for membership, but Friday morning’s announcement confirmed the additions. Boise State, Memphis, SMU and USF were also considered.

Teams to join conference in 2023

According to Brett McMurphy of the Action Network, the four teams will join the Big 12 for the 2023-2024 athletic season.

The Cougars are an FBS independent in football but play in the West Coast Conference in all other sports. It was previously reported that should they give the WCC 12-24 months notice before leaving, they would pay an exit fee of $500,000. If they gave less than 12 months notice, that number would jump to $1 million.

BYU has the most national following of the four new members. The Big 12 will schedule around Sunday athletic conflicts for BYU, as the Cougars do not participate on Sundays for religious reasons.

BYU already has four games against Power Five competition scheduled for their final year of independence: Baylor, Oregon, Arkansas and Stanford. They will play fellow independent Notre Dame in Las Vegas as well. Additional games against Boise State and Liberty are sure to draw decent viewership.

Geographically, Houston makes the most sense for the conference as they now have a school in the fourth-largest city in America in a fertile recruiting area. Of course, plenty of Texas and Texas A&M fans live there, but the program will certainly benefit from their new attachment to a Power Five conference.

UCF and Cincinnati have had the most consistent success of the programs joining the conference. Cincinnati opened this season as the highest-ranked Group of Five team in the playoff era, and UCF went 13-0 in 2017 and beat Auburn in the Peach Bowl. Additionally, the schools are located in decent-sized television markets.

Per, Pete Thamel of Yahoo! Sports, the AAC will look to quickly remedy the losses they sustained Friday.

The AAC is planning to re-make itself in the wake of three schools leaving today. The conference plans to be aggressive and has begun planning a path forward.

— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) September 10, 2021

Oklahoma and Texas are currently set to leave for the SEC beginning in 2025, and if that arrangement holds, there would be two seasons of football in the conference with 14 members.