Oklahoma, Texas reach agreement with Big 12 to join SEC in 2024

Oklahoma and Texas will join the SEC one year earlier than expected. The two schools have reached an agreement with the Big 12 to leave the conference for the SEC in 2024, the Big 12 announced Thursday.

As a result of the agreement, the two teams will owe a combined $100 million to the Big 12, and much of that figure will go to the eight legacy universities to help account for an expected decrease in revenue in 2024.

The Sooners and Longhorns were previously set to join the SEC in 2025, when the Big 12’s media rights contract expires. However, both programs and the Big 12 have come to the mutual decision it would be best to accelerate the transition, which was announced in July 2021.

The move will coincide with several other big changes across college football in 2024. That includes the expansion of the College Football Playoff to 12 teams and the additions of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten.

Advancing of the timing of the move allows the Big 12 an opportunity to finally move on. The conference is set to add four teams — BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF — in 2023. That means it will move forward with 14 teams in 2023 before going back down to 12 the following year.

This isn’t the first time the Big 12 has fallen victim to conference expansion, but each time the league recovered. The conference lost Colorado (Pac-12) and Nebraska (Big Ten) in 2011 as well as Missouri and Texas A&M to the SEC in 2012. It responded with the additions of TCU and West Virginia in 2012, and saw the Horned Frogs play for a College Football Playoff National Championship in 2022.

The recent additions of the four teams mentioned above should also help keep the conference relevant. Cincinnati became the first Group of Five school to make the CFP in 2021, and Houston is coming off of back-to-back appearances in the Elite Eight, including a Final Four trip in 2021. They will make a conference that is already widely considered the best in college basketball even tougher.

As for Oklahoma and Texas, they will look to prove they can keep up with the rest of the SEC in football. The two schools have claimed 16 Big 12 football championships since 1996, but will face much fiercer competition from the likes of Alabama, Georgia and LSU, which have combined to win the past four national championships.

It will certainly be interesting to see how the Sooners and Longhorns fit in with that group, and thanks to the recent move, we won’t have to wait much longer.

On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this report.