If you’re not a college football person, maybe you didn’t hear the news. Oklahoma and Texas are leaving the Big 12 for the SEC and will begin play in their new conference in a few years.

The Big 12 currently only has 10 teams, and the departures of OU and Texas bring the conference down to eight. In response to these defections, the conference decided to extend invites to four teams, to bring the number back up to 12.

From the league website:

The Big 12 Conference Board of Directors this morning voted to extend membership invitations to Brigham Young University, the University of Central Florida, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Houston to join the Conference.
 
Today’s actions were in accordance with Big 12 Conference Bylaw 1.5.2.b.3 requiring an affirmative vote of a supermajority of Directors, and was approved unanimously by the eight continuing members.

BYU already accepted, and the other three schools will make it official later today.

It means the Big 12 will look like this:

  • Kansas
  • K State
  • Okie State
  • Texas Tech
  • Iowa State
  • WVU
  • Baylor
  • TCU
  • UCF
  • Cincinnati
  • BYU
  • Houston

That’s a good conference. Kansas and Baylor are basketball powerhouses. Texas Tech, WVU, Houston, Cincy, and Okie State are very good as well. There is no dominant football team, but this is a league that looks to have a lot of parity, and that’s something you don’t find in the other Power Five conferences.

My original thought was that the Big 12 should go after Boise and SMU, but UCF and Cincy are great adds. Houston and BYU were no brainers. BYU was an independent and the other three schools come from the AAC, so that conference will have to add new teams in response. They would be down to eight with these departures (Temple is one of them).

Hopefully that’s it for the shuffle. There was talk of Kansas to the Big 10, and WV to the ACC, but this new-look Big 12 is a good conference. And the SEC is absolutely stacked.

Look at the SEC:

  • Bama
  • Auburn
  • Ole Miss
  • Texas
  • Oklahoma
  • Miss State
  • Arkansas
  • LSU
  • TAMU
  • Florida
  • UGA
  • South Carolina
  • Kentucky
  • Vandy
  • Mizzou
  • Tennessee

Holy crap.