The Big 12 Conference is a 16-school collegiate athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas. The Big 12 is a member of the Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division I-A), the higher of two levels of NCAA Division I football competition. Member schools are located in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
The Big 12 Conference is the second youngest of the major college athletic conferences in the United States. It was formed in 1994 when all 8 members of one of the oldest conferences, the Big Eight, were joined by 4 of the Texas members of one of the other oldest conferences, the Southwest Conference. From its formation until 2011, its 12 members competed in two divisions. Major membership changes came during the 2010–2013 Big 12 Conference realignment and still more changes came or will come during the 2021–2024 NCAA conference realignment.
In 2012, the Big 12 Conference formed an alliance with the Southeastern Conference for a 12-year deal starting in the 2014 season to host a joint post-season college bowl game between the champions of each conference in the Sugar Bowl (except for the 2014, 2017, 2020, and 2023 seasons when the bowl game is used as a College Football Playoff semifinal game).
Origins College Football Association last days On June 27, 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma that the NCAA could not punish its membership for selling their media content. As a result, individual schools and athletic conferences were freed to negotiate contracts on their own behalf.
The Big Ten and Pacific-10 conferences sold their rights to ABC. Most of the rest of the Division I-A football programs (what is now called the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, or FBS) chose to sell their rights together through an organization called the College Football Association to ABC and CBS. The primary function of the CFA was to negotiate television broadcast rights for its member conferences and independent colleges.
By 1990, the television landscape had changed and a number of the stronger programs saw opportunities for better deals outside of the CFA. Notre Dame left the CFA and sold their home game broadcast rights to NBC.
When the Southeastern Conference (SEC) invited the University of Arkansas and the University of South Carolina to join in 1990, it created shockwaves across the CFA. The other CFA conferences correctly assumed the SEC made these additions to create a better TV product with the idea of leaving the CFA.
The SEC represented one of the more valuable CFA assets. It seemed likely that if the SEC departed, the other conferences could have difficulty securing good TV deals.
After Arkansas' departure from the Southwest Conference, the SWC and Big Eight Conference recognized they were in a poor position. The SEC, with about 18% of the nation's TV audience, had a very strong TV position. The Big 8 had an 8.1% share. The Texas-based SWC had an even weaker hand with only 6.7%.
In February 1994, the SEC announced that it would leave the CFA and negotiate independently for a television deal that covered SEC schools only. This led The Dallas Morning News to proclaim that "the College Football Association as a television entity is dead". In 1995, the SEC and the Big East broke from the CFA, signing a national deal with CBS. The SEC would earn a staggering $95 million from the deal. More significantly, this change in television contracts ultimately would lead to a significant realignment of college conferences.
The Southwest Conference For decades the Southwest Conference (SWC) was one of the most dominant football conferences in America. It was seen as a football peer to other elite conferences like the Pacific Coast Conference (precursor to today's Pac-12), Big Ten, SEC, and Big Eight.
Then in 1960, professional football came to Dallas and Houston. Attendance at Rice collapsed. For over two decades, the SWC membership struggled with the issue. In 1974 a lengthy Texas Monthly article detailed the attendance decline at Rice, SMU, and TCU, and suggested the SWC was in trouble because the University of Texas felt like it was subsidizing the conference. The conference collapsed in 1994.
Though it was not the only conference engaging in recruitment violations, the SWC ranked as one of the worst. At one point, the football programs at seven of the nine SWC schools—Arkansas and Rice were the only exceptions—were under some sort of NCAA sanction. SMU was given the "death penalty" for its rule violations.
By 1986, SWC schools' NCAA penalties and bowl game ineligibilities had begun to compromise the SWC brand, driving top Texas talent out of state. Even top schools that had mostly stayed clear of trouble found their recruiting diminished. After years of SWC schools doing well in bowls, they suddenly could not compete with the elite schools of other conferences. A December 18, 1986 Dallas Morning News article stated:
As sanctions began to sap the quality of play at the top of the conference, the big three began to actively look at other conferences. In attempts to appease the conference powers, the other members made financial rule changes, eventually including allowing home teams to keep their gate revenue (gate revenue was a much larger portion of operating funds at that time). These efforts fell short of satisfying the bigger issues UT and A&M had with the SWC, but would appear to have played a role in UT's position going forward on revenue sharing.
Eventually, Arkansas departed for the SEC, effective July 1, 1991 (although the Razorbacks competed in the SWC during the 1991 football season). The SEC consisted primarily of public schools in rural areas or smaller cities (Vanderbilt was, and still is, the only private school in the SEC) that drew well and the conference had a much larger share of the nation's TV markets. As game day attendance and TV revenue drove athletic budgets, the SEC represented a much more financially sound organization.
UT athletic director DeLoss Dodds reflected on the importance of Arkansas' departure, saying, “What had to happen, [was] there had to be a crisis for change.”
Arkansas athletic director Frank Broyles, who played at Georgia Tech when the Yellow Jackets competed in the SEC, said that he was encouraged to leave by UT's and Texas A&M's leaders, because it would destabilize the conference, allowing them to do the same. The leaderships at UT and Texas A&M believed they would never be allowed to leave first. (In the summer of 1990, word would leak of Texas and Texas A&M thinking of following Arkansas into the SEC. Reaction in Texas would be very negative, with politicians threatening both schools' funding before the idea was tabled.)
The Southwest Conference could not find a replacement its membership would agree upon. The private schools were in denial of the depth of problems facing the conference. They suggested simply replacing Arkansas, a public school, with private schools BYU or Tulane, which left the SEC in 1966. With four private schools and four public schools already in the SWC, adding either choice could potentially give the private schools a voting majority.
Private or not, UT and Texas A&M were dead set against replacing Arkansas. The NCAA sanctions and Arkansas' departure made the conference appear broken to fans in Texas. Texas and Texas A&M's leaderships felt the conference was inherently flawed, with too many mouths to feed off too few TVs. Adding a single school was not going to change that dynamic, it would only create the public perception of a healed conference and prolong UT and Texas A&M's suffering.
"Predatory" conferences Missouri showed interest in Big Ten membership after Penn State joined. Around 1993, the Big Ten explored adding Kansas, Missouri and Rutgers (which eventually was invited into the Big Ten in November 2012, joining officially on July 1, 2014), or other potential schools, to create a 14-team league with two divisions.
In the early 1990s, Texas had discussions with the Pac-10, a conference with similar academic views. An affiliation with the Pac-10 appealed to UT leaders. Former UT president Robert Berdahl told Mark Wagrin of the San Antonio Express-News: “Texas wanted desperately the academic patina that the Pac 10 yielded... To be associated with UCLA, Stanford and Cal in academics was very desirable.” The Pac-10 wanted to add UT and the University of Colorado. For some reason, an offer didn't come until after the formation of the Big 12.
Some reports state that Stanford refused to vote to admit UT in an effort to protect the Cardinal's conference dominance in non-revenue sports. (The Pac-10 required unanimous votes for expansion.)
(At the end of 1994, UT's athletic director DeLoss Dodds, as he was turning down the Pac-10, stated that the Pac-10 leadership informed UT they would have a standing invitation for the Longhorns. What is unclear is when the Pac-10 made that offer, although Dodds did use the word "always" in describing the offer.)
One report stated that the offer was changed to UT and Texas A&M. UT reportedly tried to carry Texas A&M with them into the Pac-10. No evidence confirms Pac-10 support for that idea. This change allegedly upset the leadership at Colorado and drove them to take a more active role in protecting the Big Eight. (Colorado's Chancellor James Corbridge was also the Big Eight chairman. He was very involved with the TV negotiations for the new conference and the integration of the Texas schools.)
UT then approached the Big Ten but was turned down, because the conference had recently instituted a moratorium on expansion.
Texas then turned to the SEC, and negotiations reached an advanced stage. UT abruptly withdrew after concluding that the SEC had no interest in strengthening academics. Berdahl said, “We were quite interested in raising academic standards... And the Southeastern Conference had absolutely no interest in that.”
Texas A&M had flirted with the SEC since the late 1980s. In 1993, it approached the conference about joining, partnering with the University of Houston. UT had given up on the SEC and Texas A&M's leadership didn't want to try leaving the SWC on their own. The SEC moved expansion plans to the back burner.
Then UT's interests turned to the Big Eight. Texas and Oklahoma's leaders both looked favorably on the idea of being in the same conference, but both schools had other options. Former Kansas State University president Jon Wefald voiced fears that if UT had joined the Pac-10, there would be no way for the Big Eight to ramp up their TV payouts in order to keep Oklahoma from joining the SEC for more lucrative TV payouts.
Negotiations with Texas and other schools The Big Eight had been in pursuit of some kind of alliance with the Southwest Conference since Arkansas's departure destabilized that historic conference.
The Big Eight and SWC members saw the potential financial benefits of an alliance to negotiate television deals, but a true alliance of 16 teams that would retain the seven other SWC schools was not viewed as optimal by UT. Dodds and the Longhorn leadership viewed proposals of this sort as continuing business as usual in the SWC. Arkansas's departure allowed UT and Texas A&M to clear four or less profitable dates from their football schedules and eight or more from their basketball schedules.
For years the Big Eight could not interest UT in a merger. Without Texas to ensure the retention of Oklahoma, the Big Eight was not interested.
Reports at the end of 1993 disclosed the discussions of the Big Eight about adding BYU and half of the SWC, with SMU, TCU, Rice, and Houston "priced out" of the new conference.