What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
This week, it’s a six-pack of stuff from the NCAA Tournament to Big 12 Media Days and more.
NCAA Tournament Expansion Stinks
At the end of the NCAA Tournament, multiple outlets reported that the NCAA, once again, is close to expanding the NCAA Tournament that absolutely nobody wants expanded.
The idea is for March Madness to go to a 78-team event with more First Four games on Tuesday and Wednesday that feed into the 64-team field. If you want more mediocre high major teams in the event, this plan is for you.
There is no way this will benefit mid-major or low-major programs in any way. Now, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, and the rest of the power conference commissioners don’t really care about that. They want more access for their teams. That’s their job.
But the NCAA Tournament is perfect the way it is. It might be the one playoff system that doesn’t need more tweaking. But, NCAA president Charlie Baker and his cohorts can’t stop picking at it.
This comes at a time when the Cinderellas are becoming less of a thing. Look at the last two NCAA Tournaments. In each of the last two tournaments 12 of the 16 teams that advanced to the Sweet 16 were in top four seeds in their region. Worse, two double-digit seeds reached the Sweet 16 and both were high majors.
In the pre-NIL and transfer portal era, we were seeing a shift in mid-major programs being able to compete and get to the Final Four. After all, not everyone can go to Kansas. Now, everyone can, assuming you’re good enough and can transfer in. Now, those players, like the ones at my alma mater, Stephen F. Austin, are getting the chance to move to high majors via the portal and long-term that’s bad for those schools. It could also be bad for the sport.
It hints at what I think may be coming — an NCAA Tournament for the haves and another for the have-nots. Sure, I’ll cover the Big 12 no matter what. But that kind of split would irreparably damage the tournament we all love.
Five For Five Eligibility
The NCAA is also kicking around a new rule that I can get behind — five years to play five years. No more redshirts, no more medical waivers, no more stuff like that. You start college, you can play five years and then you hit the real world. I like it. So let’s explore how the NCAA can screw this up.
It’s an easy trip in the time machine. Remember when the NCAA implemented the one-time transfer rule after COVID and started denying waivers to those that had already transferred once but still had eligibility left after the rule was made? Good times. West Virginia’s RaeQuan Battle was one of the athletes that fought it and won. That’s why we have the system we have now.
The mistake the NCAA made then was not grandfathering in those athletes. Had it done that, it might have avoided all of this, and we might have a one-time transfer rule that works. Instead, we have chaos.
So, if the NCAA approves this, give all the current athletes the chance to play five years, let it play itself out while the new athletes reset the system. Do that and it might actually work this time. Because if this ends with the NCAA in a courthouse, well, we know how that’s going to end up.
Big 12 Media Days
It’s already time to start thinking about Big 12 football media days. Crazy. I live in the Dallas area so obviously I’ll be there in July at The Star in Frisco, which is perfect. It’s just big enough for everyone and you don’t have to worry about a giant scoreboard falling on you.
We already know which teams are going to talk Tuesday and Wednesday. We don’t know which players will talk. That isn’t usually released until the week before the event.
But we do know when we’ll get to talk to new coaches like Iowa State’s Jimmy Rogers, Kansas State’s Collin Klein, Oklahoma State’s Eric Morris and Utah’s Morgan Scalley.
Bowl Season
Here’s an unintended consequence from the College Football Playoff’s inability to expand in 2026 — Bowl Season will remain the same. Per On3’s Brett McMurphy, the bowl tieins that we saw in 2025 will be the same for 2026. It’s highly likely the Big 12’s four former Pac-12 teams will still be tied to Pac-12 bowls later this year.
I must be honest. I hadn’t really thought playoff expansion impact that. But the bowl non-playoff bowl games are waiting for the playoffs to expand to reshuffle the tie-ins in case some of those non-playoff bowl games become playoff bowl games. For the Big 12, there is likely no change for 2026, unless so many Big 12 teams win six or more games that a non-Big 12 bowl game needs an addition.
The Big 12 Non-Saturday Games
So, Texas Tech will play their Friday night game in September with Houston, and they toed the company line and promoted it when the schedule was released. But the Red Raiders got a second non-Saturday home game — Thanksgiving Day.
Why isn’t Tech raising the same ruckus about Turkey Day? Well, they’ve played games on the holiday before and that’s a far less onerous scheduling change than a non-holiday weekend Friday game. Second, the Big 12 title game is on a Friday this year. If Tech fulfills its goal of reaching Arlington again, the Red Raiders get an extra day of rest and prep for that game.
If that’s the trade-off for playing on a Friday in September, I think I’d take it.
Zero Week Will Be Week One Soon
This was going to happen at some point. The NCAA appears much closer to making Zero Week, the weekend before Labor Day, the official first week of the season. That would give teams 14 weeks to play 12 games. Remember — most Big 12 teams are only getting one bye week this year as opposed to the two they received last year because of the way the calendar is structure (Labor Day is Sept. 7, about as late as it could possibly be).
If approved that would start in 2027. The biggest worry I have is scheduling. It’s one thing to play a small group of games in that window with few huge matchups. Most can be played at night to take the edge off the heat. But a full slate in the last weekend in August? That’s going to require day games. Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to play a 2:30 p.m. game in Houston in August. Or Waco or Fort Worth or Lubbock or Stillwater or, dear Lord, Tucson or Tempe.
I think you’ll see many of those huge matchups shift from Labor Day to that weekend and for many of them to be played in domes to avoid that heat and make scheduling simpler.
