Big 12’s newest members show that the conference lowered its standards

They are celebrating these days at BYU and UCF, at Cincinnati and Houston. They are celebrating entry into the Power 5, the velvet rope held open for them to step past and into the collegiate athletic world of money, and clout, and money. This may be the closest that college football gets to the relegation system of the Premier League.

Except for one thing.

The newest third-to-be of the Big 12 knocked on the conference’s door five years ago and the Big 12 said no thanks. The four programs didn’t measure up. And now they do, not because the four have raised their programs — although they have, and I’ll get to that — but because the conference has lowered its standards.

Bringing BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston into the Big 12 is as much confirmation as battlefield promotion, part merger and part upgrade, and how much of which we won’t know until the TV networks start handing out money.

Add the new Big 12 to NIL and the transfer portal and the expanded playoff on the check-back-with-us-in-five-years-to-find-out-what-it-means list. The power of a conference is derived from the revenue it generates, and until we can compare the Big 12 to the new Big Ten contract(s) and the new Pac-12 contract(s), all we’re doing is making guesses.

“They’ve added very good schools, very good programs,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said. “They’ve been there so far (meaning the Big 12 in the Power 5). It will be interesting to see how the structure comes together.”

Let me go ahead and say it: The Autonomy Five is now the Autonomy Four and Change. In terms of the NCAA structure, the Big 12 will remain at the grownups’a table. But if the measure is by football impact, on television and on the field, the reconstituted Big 12 will remain where it has fallen, a few steps and many millions of dollars behind the ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC.

I don’t think I’m exactly going out on a limb here.

“I used to say we need to schedule Power 5 (teams) and I started realizing that’s not the right designation,” Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin told the Orlando Sentinel. “It needs to be we need to schedule quality opponents because there are quality opponents in non-Power 5 leagues, and going forward there may be some teams in Power 5 leagues that aren’t quality opponents. I don’t know if that designation is going to carry the weight going forward that it once did.”

Texas and Oklahoma carried the rest of the Big 12. Just ask them. Texas has been all too happy to say so, usually in the form of demanding — and getting — more than one-tenth of the league revenue. Texas and Oklahoma are leaving to go hang with the cool kids, the ones with which they have more in common if measured by bank account instead of geography and shared history.

The new Big 12 will consist of programs with tradition and passion. But how many schools in this conference are the top program in their state?

West Virginia, yes.

Kansas or Kansas State — I’m not refereeing that argument.

If not first, BYU is a close second to Utah.

I don’t mean this as a slight to the states of Kansas, Utah and West Virginia, but, I mean, it’s Kansas, Utah and West Virginia. If you combine the TV homes in Kansas City, Salt Lake City and Charleston, you’d have about 2.5 million homes, which falls short of an Atlanta, or a Washington, D.C.

And keep in mind, BYU shares Salt Lake with the Utes, and Kansas/Kansas State share Kansas City with Missouri.

The other programs in the new Big 12 are no higher than second in their respective states. In the case of Cincinnati, a distant second. Oklahoma State and Iowa State, second. UCF soon might be second, the way that Florida State and Miami are making a hash of things, but a distant second. Baylor, TCU, Texas Tech and now Houston are fighting for a distant third.

If you look past TV revenue, consider the football tradition of the new Big 12. BYU’s entry into the conference will double the number of national championships won by the new Big 12. TCU finished No. 1 in 1938, and BYU in 1984. Hey, if 46 years between national championships were a crime, Michigan would have been convicted in 1994, three years before the Wolverines ended their drought (Notre Dame, at 33 seasons, is on the clock).

But the elusive nature of success on the field is worth discussing, if only in the context of the Big 12 deciding on these four schools. UCF is four seasons removed from going 13-0 — and six seasons removed from going 0-12. Had the Big 12 made the decision two years ago, does it take Memphis, which reached the Cotton Bowl? If it waited two more years, does it take SMU instead of Houston?

No sport lends itself to what-if questions more than college football. In the midst of the most changes in college athletics in years, with the NCAA abdicating its leadership and most of the industry trying to decide whether SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is Einstein or Voldemort, the Big 12 made four schools very happy. But let’s not go crazy. The conference expansion is a merger of equals as much as it is a promotion.