After Baylor had its home-and-home series with Oregon canceled, the Bears have replaced that series with Maryland out of the Big Ten Conference. The game will be played in College Park, Maryland in 2027, and then return to Waco, Texas for the 2028 college football season.
While it was a mutually-agreed upon cancelation between Baylor and Oregon, Baylor elected to replace it with a Power 4 team, while Oregon has replaced its 2027 game with Coastal Carolina. That’s telling, as clearly the Big 12 is looking to get more Power 4 games on its schedule, while the Big Ten and SEC seems more incentivized to have fewer Power 4 games against the Big 12 and ACC.
The Big 12’s Battle to Play the SEC and Big Ten
This news comes one day after Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire challenged Texas to drop its Week 1 game and take on the Red Raiders. The Longhorns and Red Raiders both have Week 1 games scheduled against Texas State and Abilene Christian, respectively. However, McGuire said that he’s already spoken to Keith Patterson at ACU and GJ Kinne at Texas State, and both were willing to buy out of their games and play each other instead.
“We’re willing to buy our contract out of ACU,” McGuire said. “I’m sure because Texas has got a lot of money, they can buy their contract out, but I do know there’s a lot of Red Raiders that could help them buy that contract out if they don’t want to, and they can come to Lubbock in Week 1 and figure out if their twos and threes can win this conference.”
Things went one step further when Tech megabooster Cody Campbell said he would pay Texas’ buyout for its Texas State game.
The Big 12 is doing its best to try and challenge the Power 2 as best as it can. The league continues to deserve credit for that. It just needs to keep getting as many of these games on the schedule as possible.
