Big 12 Football: 5 PAC-12 teams best for conference expansion

If the Big 12 football conference wanted to continue the expansion conversation, who would be some good candidates out of the PAC-12 to consider?

On May 22, the Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby once again opened up on the thoughts that are constantly tossed around for this conference concerning possible future expansion. The Big 12 football conference currently has 10 teams that compete, including the likes of the Texas Longhorns football program and the Oklahoma Sooners.

Since the four teams that left the Big 12 within the last decade officially left the conference, the idea of expanding the field was brought about. The Big 12 does have the least amount of teams of all of the Power Five conferences. The other four have as follows: PAC-12 (12), ACC (14), Big Ten (14), and SEC (14).

One possible area of conference expansion that was talked about before was turning to the PAC-12. Since the Big 12 and PAC-12 tend to be the two conferences that are in the roughest situation for athletics across the board, some type of merging of the two makes some sense. It was talked about before when the Big 12 was originally being broken apart.

In the last decade, the four teams that bolted from the Big 12 included the Nebraska Cornhuskers (Big Ten), Colorado Buffaloes (PAC-12), Mizzou Tigers (SEC), Texas A&M Aggies (SEC).

The novel coronavirus pandemic brought about the discussion of expansion since there’s just not much else to talk about right now beyond the return of the impending college football season. But here’s what Bowlsby had to say on the matter of potential Big 12 conference expansion on May 22 (monologue courtesy of 247Sports).

"“The Big 12 has 10 and the Big Ten has 14, so you know some of us are just numerically challenged,” the Big 12 commissioner says. “But you know I don’t see a lot of realignment on the horizon. Last time around it was due to cable TV and capturing cable households. The cable industry is shrinking and it’s going to continue to shrink. That as a motivation is unlikely to be there. The other thing is if you bring people in without the advantage of capturing cable households, or some other form of revenue all you’re doing is dividing the money more ways. “I really don’t see another round of of realignment, I think it’s a we’re going to be in a steady state for a while here.”"

The Big 12 and PAC-12 are spread out a good bit geographically. There are some other teams in the Big Ten and SEC that both are more local to Big 12 country than the PAC-12, but this conference is already pretty spread out. Adding the likes of the West Virginia Mountaineers to the conference prior to the 2012 football season made that a thing.

Here’s a deeper look into who the five best conference expansion candidates would be for the Big 12 (namely for football) if they were to merge with some teams from the PAC-12.