College football mogul Josh Pate floated his perfect-world scenario for seven different conferences consisting of the current Power Four make-up as it stands. His ideal version of the map includes revivals of the Southwest and Big Eight conferences with 10 schools apiece and the surgical removal of current Big 12 members into their own geographical conference.
In Pate’s proposal, the new ‘Big Eight’ would return former foes Oklahoma, Nebraska and Missouri to the conference; Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU, Houston, West Virginia, Cincinnati, UCF, Arizona and Arizona State are all punted to new homes across multiple conferences.
Conference has grown into a scary behemoth ever since Oklahoma and Texas jumped ship for the SEC in 2024. Geographical lines have been blurred, and, for the most part, Pate is attempting to rectify some of those logical conclusions with his above table.
Now, I’ve tinkered with the super-conference concept in various spreadsheets and group chats in the past, but the consistent opposing factor is just how regional the Big 12 remains even by ‘modern’ standards where Cal competes in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
But, every time I create a “superconference” format, almost every model includes divisions or two distinct subleagues based on geographic differences. In the case of the Big 12, this is a legitimate factor when pitching a conference as a television market (a point often misconstrued in CFB circles around the country).
Pate’s sketch makes excellent moves reintroducing Oklahoma, Nebraska and Missouri to the picture. But BYU and Utah, two schools that’ve certainly competed in their limited time as members of the present-day Big 12, are creating a mismatch of what I feel most legacy Big 12 and Big Eight fans are looking for in their ‘Midwest’ conference.
Yes, Colorado is an exception but largely because the school is charter member of the original Big Eight since the late 1940s and its history along the Pacific is contained within just a decade-plus as a member of the Pac-12, where they hardly competed.
Losing Texas Tech, Baylor and TCU hurts because they’re each entitled to some of the Big 12’s recent rigor with relevancy and league title game appearances inside the 2020s. Frankly, I don’t know that many folks would miss West Virginia, Cincinnati or UCF in a strictly football sense, and those schools would likely enjoy a more competitive position along the Atlantic end of Pate’s map.
BYU and Utah are best served as a package deal, and I certainly believe there’s room for them in Pate’s revised Pac-12, which probably couldn’t be named that considering the conference has already realigned as a Greater 6 power.
I should also point out that each of Pate’s seven conference mock-ups include an even 10 teams. While pretty, it’s a tad too perfect for create an understandable travel schedule and could realistically be modeled without crisp numbers ending in zero.
