Major college football reconfiguration is an enduring feature of the college game. But in 2021, a century-old pattern seems to have been broken.
For about a century, major college football schools have been migrating from one conference to another, always with the intent of improving their athletic standing. The Big Ten is the lone exception. When the Big Ten was established in the late 19th Century, only Purdue (among the institutions at launch) migrated from another conference (the Indiana Intercollegiate Athletic Association). The other inaugural schools–Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Northwestern, Chicago, and Illinois–held independent status before joining what was coined initially as “The Western Conference.”
For today’s other Power 5 conferences, migrating from lesser to major conferences is the story of college football evolution.
–The original version of today’s Big 12–established in 1928 as the Big 6–had its genesis in the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association.
–The Southeastern Conference, established in 1932, is a descendant of the Southern Conference.
–The Atlantic Coast Conference came along in 1953 via the same bloodline.
–The start of today’s PAC-12 began in 1959 when eight members departed the Pacific Coast Conference.
The recent decision by Texas and Oklahoma to shift from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference is consistent with that trend. But the recent announcement that the Big 12 will expand by adding four new schools is not.
First, let’s look at the longstanding pattern. Then, we’ll discuss how the Big 12’s evolution from 1928-2021 fits the pattern and why its recent expansion does not.
The old Pacific Coast Conference: The conference also included Idaho and Montana.
The historical pattern is well represented in how the PAC-12 came about. Eight current PAC-12 members began as members of the Pacific Coast Conference–Cal, Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, Southern Cal, and UCLA. In 1959, those schools left the PCC to create their own league, which they called (not surprisingly) the Pacific 8. In 1978, the league added Arizona and Arizona State, with both schools leaving the Western Athletic Conference to join. Then, to get to twelve, Colorado (from the Big 12) and Utah (from the Mountain West Conference) joined in 2011.
Courtesy Roanoke Times
There’s another fascinating feature of major conference evolution from then to today. Precursor conferences to the ACC (Southern), Big 12 (Missouri Valley), PAC-12 (Pacific Coast), and SEC (Southern) included a mix of institutions, some large/major schools and some not. For example, the Pacific Coast Conference included Stanford and Idaho (see graphic above). In the south, the Southern Conference had Alabama playing alongside George Washington.
And that juxtaposition made for interesting competition. Take 1950, for example. Clemson was arguably the cream of the 17-member Southern Conference. The Tigers went 9-0-1, beat home-standing Miami FL in the Orange Bowl, and ended the year ranked #10 by the AP. But CU didn’t win the conference that year. Washington & Lee did. The Generals went undefeated in conference play and finished 8-3, including a Gator Bowl win against Wyoming.
Mizzou beat the Huskers, 14-7, on October 9. 1926. Back then, the MVIAA included Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Oklahoma A&M (now Okla State), and Oklahoma. Other members were Drake and Grinnell.
The historical pattern just described is evident in the evolution of the Big 12–from its inception in 1928 as the Big Six until 2021. The six institutions–Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, and Oklahoma–played initially in the Missouri Valley association that also included smaller and lesser-known schools—Drake and Grinnell, specifically (see graphic at right).
In the late 1920s, the schools split from the MVIAA to create the Big Six. In the 1940s, Colorado made it seven, and Oklahoma State (once known as Oklahoma A&M) joined in the late 1950s. That’s when the league became known as the Big 8, and it remained that way for about four decades until the Southwest Conference disbanded in the mid-1990s. Then, the Big 8 became the Big 12 by adding Texas Tech, Texas, Baylor, and Texas A&M.
But something very different happened this century–departures rather than additions. The league lost two members to the SEC (Texas A&M and Missouri) and one member each to the PAC-12 (Colorado) and the Big Ten (Nebraska). The conference then replaced two of those four losses with TCU and West Virginia. The league dropped from 12 to 10 schools but retained its “Big 12” brand.
This year, the league lost two more members–Texas and Oklahoma-to the SEC–leaving the conference with eight schools. To compensate, the league voted last week to add four schools–Central Florida, Cincinnati, Houston, and BYU–to make the Big 12 whole again. And to keep the college football tradition in place, UCF, UC, and UH will leave the American Athletic Conference to join the Big 12.
But when it comes to how major conferences have evolved over the decades, the addition of those four schools cuts against the grain. Following the Big Ten’s lead, the SEC, PAC-12, and ACC launched and grew via peer institutions. The adage, “Birds of a feather flock together,” applies to athletic conferences and academic status figures into like-affiliation. All members of the other four Power 5 conferences are either major public (often state flagship) schools (e.g., Oregon, PAC-12) or major private institutions (e.g., Vanderbilt, SEC). Not so with the new Big 12 additions. Neither the three state school additions (UCF, Houston, and Cincinnati) nor BYU, a private institution, fit that profile. Only BYU comes close.
The invitations represent a step up for the invitees, but a step down for the Big 12.
The worst-case scenario is that the Big 12 will go the way of the Western Athletic Conference? Established in 1962, the WAC was once comparable in status to the Mountain West Conference. Members included Arizona, TCU, Air Force, and Utah, among other name schools. Then poaching started, and schools began looking for alternatives. Starting in 1978 and continuing for decades, a total of 29 universities dropped out of the WAC. Over time, the WAC went from a near-major conference to a conference with only one major university affiliate remaining, namely, New Mexico State. The WAC in 2021 includes Abilene Christian, Houston Baptist, Dixie State, Grand Canyon, Central Arkansas, and other schools of like status.
While it’s arguably hyperbolic to compare the WAC with the Big 12 (the WAC was never a Power 5 competitor), the two conferences share a common feature—schools leaving. Over the last decade, six schools–the Big 12’s marquee schools, OU, Texas, and Nebraska–in addition to Texas A&M, Missouri, and Colorado, have bolted the conference. Only one other non-Big 12 Power 5 school–Maryland–changed conference affiliations during that timeframe. Maryland left the ACC for financial reasons. The Big Ten is a bigger pasture. And, on the topic of money, in 2018-19 (just before COVID-19 hit), USAToday reports that UT spent more money on athletics than any other public university in the U.S. Texas A&M was a close #2, and OU wasn’t far behind at #8. Money is one reason the SEC was interested in plucking those three schools.
The bottom line is that the Big 12 is in big-time trouble, and replacing Texas and Oklahoma with Houston, BYU, Cincinnati, and UCF says just how much. It is a Pyrrhic Victory, that is, a self-proclaimed win that comes with a high cost. It not only blunts a so-called achievement, it retards prospects of future success.
As a graduate of two Big 12 schools, it pains me to conclude that the Power 5 has become the Power 4. Want proof? When the SEC decided to poach the Big 12 for OU and UT–and the other conferences expressed dismay–the ACC, Big Ten, and PAC-12 formed ‘an alliance.’
It’s not the beginning of the end for the Big 12. The beginning began when Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, and Texas A&M left. It’s the middle of the end now. Commissioner Bowlsby said recently that the Big 12 might not be done adding new members. That’s what the WAC commissioner said. He was right. But what the WAC became was very different from what it had been. The same outcome seems plausible for the Big 12.
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Dr. Banks
Dedicated to my longtime colleague, Dr. Robert F. Banks, a Washington & Lee graduate, who passed away in July.
Writing about football history, especially W&L’s success years ago, was the joyful part of writing this article. And a fascinating feature of W&L’s history is how the school dropped football just four years after beating Wyoming in the Gator Bowl. The sport is back on campus today at the Division III level, but you can imagine what it was like in 1954 to walk away from a signature activity. The story–and all the controversy and politics involved–is told beautifully by Frank Parsons in From Gator to Gone in Four Years.
Bob and I worked together at Michigan State and, as I thought about that connection, I realized an oversight in this article. In the history of what we now call “Power 5 football,” there is one exception to the pattern of inviting peer institutions only to join one of the five major conferences. It happened in the late 1940s and it was … Michigan State. When Chicago dropped out of the Big Ten, the search for a replacement eventually ended up in East Lansing. But it is anything but an unremarkable story. Chicago was (and remains) one of the world’s premier institutions of higher education, and the other Big Ten schools were then (and still are) among the nation’s best schools. But back in that day, Michigan State was still a college, not to gain university status until the mid-1950s. Being admitted to the Big Ten was a coup for a school the had big aspirations–in athletics and academics. Today, MSU is a great school, but seven decades ago, it had dreams of being great. Football helped make it so.
