UConn A Candidate For Big 12?

For those of you following the eternal soap opera of conference realignment, you’ve no doubt heard the rumors that the Big XII is looking to expand.

The Big XII is, ironically, the only power conference with fewer than 12 members, and as such, is not currently eligible to hold a conference championship game. Estimates show that this may be costing them upwards of $20mm/year in game revenue alone, but it also appears to be a hindrance to the league getting a representative into the College Football Playoff. League champ Oklahoma managed to snag a spot this year, but it was touch-and-go for a while, and they may have missed out if Notre Dame hadn’t lost at Stanford, or if the Cardinal hadn’t lost their season opener at Northwestern.

So let’s say that the Big XII decides to expand. Where would they look? The American seems to be the obvious league to pluck from, which could definitely hurt UConn, if the wrong teams get picked. Given how conference realignment has worked for UConn in the past, the smart money is on the wrong teams getting picked again.

The most likely choice has long seemed Cincinnati. They bring quality football and men’s basketball, a solid TV market, the fertile recruiting ground of Ohio, and a travel partner for West Virginia. The Mountaineers, added to the Big XII in 2011, are an 860 mile drive from Iowa State, currently their closest in-conference neighbor. Cincinnati is about halfway between Iowa State and WVU, which would help with a number of travel issues. This would be a big loss for UConn, as Cincinnati is the most legitimate basketball brand the Huskies see on their league schedule these days, and a consistent draw in football.

The next school that has been getting a lot of play as a possible addition for the Big XII is Brigham Young University. BYU has a lot of obvious qualities, including a huge, national fanbase, as well as quality football and basketball. BYU isn’t without warts as an option for the Big XII, though.

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For one, they do nothing to help with the conference’s travel issues. Located in Provo, Utah, BYU is a whopping 1900-mile drive from the West Virginia campus, and is further from almost all other Big XII schools than WVU. The travel issues are compounded by the fact that BYU, being a devoutly Mormon school, doesn’t play sports on Sundays. They might be able to make this work as a football-only member, but as an all-sports member, this would be totally untenable. It’s not clear if the Big XII would be willing to get into affiliate memberships for their most lucrative sport, which would seem to more-or-less eliminate BYU as an expansion candidate.

This, now, brings us to our own University of Connecticut. Thanks to the football team’s resurgence under Bob Diaco, UConn is no longer hampered by having one of the nation’s worst teams in the most important sport. UConn would be another good travel partner for WVU, as they’re also closer to the Mountaineers than any current Big XII school, and they bring with them a number of significant positives that no other expansion candidate can offer.

For one, they’re an east coast school and a brief drive from New York City and Boston, the #1 and #8 TV markets in the country, respectively. They’re a land-grant school with statewide support, meaning you’re not dealing with only local fan support, like urban schools like Memphis and Cincinnati are. UConn would be one of the best academic schools in the Big 12, ranking behind only Texas, according to the US News and World Report rankings of National Universities.

And, of course, there’s the tremendous athletic success seen by the Huskies in men’s and women’s basketball. Surely the Big XII would love to see someone legitimately challenge Kansas for the annual Big XII crown (and tell me you wouldn’t all circle that game on the calendar every year, Jayhawks fans).

There are some other options, like Memphis, UCF, and Houston, but all seem to have too many problems to overcome, whether it be the Johnny-Come-Lately nature of Memphis and UCF, and what would appear to be fleeting success in football (UCF went winless this season and is replacing its head coach and athletic director, and Memphis just lost the coach who rebuilt their program, as well as the star QB who carried it for the last few years), or the redundancy of adding Houston to a league with four Texas schools already.

For my money, I’d love to see the Big XII go right past 12 member schools and add UConn, Cincinnati, Temple, and South Florida. Other than the PAC-12, whose west coast location insulates them from most conference realignment shenanigans, all of the other power conferences are already at 14 schools. This provides the league with the remaining members of the old Big East, so only schools who have already played in power conferences. It provides access to the #1, #4, #8, and #11 TV markets, it adds quality football and basketball, and it adds Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania recruiting.

This would be the ideal outcome for UConn (and WVU), as it would create a legitimate eastern division in the Big XII, keeping travel at least as manageable as it has been in the American, with some continued rivalries with Cincinnati and Temple, and adding major basketball powers in Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. Will this happen? Almost certainly not, but it’s nice to dream, right?