Report: Big 12 expansion planning to begin for 2023-24 academic year

Expansion of the Big 12 seems to be coming sooner than anticipated.

According to Jon Rothstein, Houston, Cincinnati, and UCF will all be joining the Big 12 for the 2023-2024 academic year. In the original announcement for the schools joining the conference, the conference said they would join on June 1, 2025. The timeline will now be moved up by two years.

Houston, Cincinnati, and UCF are currently members of the American Athletic Conference and Rothstein says that “conversations are ongoing” in regards to the exit fee. Switching conferences two years earlier will see those three pay the AAC a hefty fee.

Ross Dellinger of Sports Illustrated quote tweeted the report, confirming the early move was “always the expectation.” He says negotiations between the three programs and the AAC will be finalized “this week.”

As for BYU, the other school joining the Big 12, is a member of the WCC in every sport except football. They will be leaving at the same time as the other three, except for men’s volleyball. No official date for when the Cougars are in the Big 12 has been reported yet.

Now, the Big 12 will have to restructure the way their league works, at least for a couple of seasons. With the pending move to the SEC for Texas and Oklahoma, the conference will have 14 teams for a maximum of two seasons. Dellinger says when the Big 12 meetings week occur, how they structure the football schedule will be the main point of discussion.

“In fact, the main topic during Big 12 meetings next week will be structuring a 14-team football league: divisions or no divisions? Eight league games or 9? UCF, BYU, Houston & Cincinnati will be in the league with Texas & OU for at least one season (2023) and maybe two (2024),” Dellinger said.”

As of now, with 10 teams in the conference, the Big 12 has been playing a round-robin format — in both football (nine conference games) and basketball (18 conference games). The last time divisions were intact on the gridiron was the 2010 season before Colorado and Nebraska left for the Pac-12 and Big Ten, respectively.

As of now, the Longhorns and Sooners are set to stay in the conference until June 1, 2025. However, like Houston, Cincinnati, and UCF are doing, they could pay a buyout fee to the Big 12 and leave for the SEC earlier.

Until then, the Big 12 will have 14 teams and a few new schedule structures to deal with.