Big 12 Football: 3 PAC-12 schools that benefit from joining the conference

3) PAC-12 teams that would benefit from joining Big 12 football: Arizona

Heading into the 2020 season, one of the bleaker outlooks of any team out of the PAC-12 lies with the Arizona Wildcats. Former Texas A&M Aggies head coach Kevin Sumlin is on one of the hotter seats of any in his role in the Power Five conferences. Sumlin’s hot seat could make any heat on head Texas football coach Tom Herman’s seat look pretty cold.

Arizona steadily got worse over the course of the last two seasons under Sumlin’s direction. They have yet to become postseason eligible in his two years at the helm in Tucson, finishing with nine combined wins and 15 losses. That’s not to mention the success of Arizona in the PAC-12 slate, where they finished up with a record of 2-7 last season.

Nothing seems like it would help the Wildcats as much as a change of scenery like joining the Big 12 hypothetically for at least one season. Arizona really hasn’t had a prominent finish to any college football season since 2014, where they had double-digit wins under former head coach Rich Rodriguez.

What Arizona as an athletic department brings to the table for the Big 12 is a very well rounded group of teams stemming from men’s hoops, to baseball, all the way to softball that won a national championship as recently as 2007. If the Big 12 could get Arizona into the mix long-term, it would make a lot of sense for both sides.

But there’s still one major bargaining chip on the table for the two sides in this hypothetical discussion.