Big 12 Football: 3 expansion candidates that should’ve been included

With the Big 12 football conference recently finding four expansion candidates that it was confident to move forward with in the past month, the path is paved to see what the landscape will soon look like. And by that we mean what the Big 12 will soon look like in the post-Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners landscape in the conference.

It was Texas and Oklahoma announcing a couple of months ago that the two schools would be departing the Big 12 for the SEC that caused this conference to go the expansion route in the first place. And it actually didn’t take the Big 12 to find four schools to add to the conference after the Oklahoma and Texas news this summer.

Who else the Big 12 football conference could’ve considered for expansion?

The four schools that the Big 12 will add are the Houston Cougars, BYU Cougars, Cincinnati Bearcats, and UCF Knights. These four additions make sense for the Big 12, and it likely ensures that Oklahoma and Texas will have to keep to their payout of these two schools leave the conference early.

It looks like the latest that the Longhorns and Sooners will leave the Big 12 to officially compete in the SEC is 2025. That is when the current grant of rights for media deals runs out for these two schools with the Big 12. But there is still the chance that those two might bolt sooner.

So, with Big 12 expansion already set in motion, what candidates were the right picks for the conference? And which schools should the Big 12 have considered for expansion that didn’t get the invitation?

Here’s a look into three schools that the Big 12 should’ve considered for expansion this year.