Great. The two also-rans who spent the last year shitting on the “truckstop” conference!
I kid, I kid… mostly.
In reality, they’re no-brainers. Utah is the defending conference champ and I have fond memories of some absolutely great TCU-UU games in the “Mountain Best” years. ASU just wheedled their way into the AAU alongside Utah, which is a feather in the conference’s cap, and ASU plus Zona actually does lock down Phoenix and even provides a shadow of a presence in SoCal. And of course, 4 to the B12 and 2-4 to the B1G finally euthanizes the PAC as any legitimate threat to the B12’s status as the eventual #3 conference and a desirable landing spot for any ACC teams that don’t go to the Super-2.
I am suddenly much more okay with SMU getting that PAC invite they’ve been angling for. I do feel bad for OSU and WSU, but this shit is the definition of a zero-sum game and the B12 is already counting on a basketball getting lodged in the drain when the SEC and B1G try to flush us away.
OSU and Wazzu might get into the Big 12, according to some rumours. We’ll see but it wouldn’t entirely shock me.
I think it’s possible, on partial shares, if Cal and Stanford manage B1G invites and push them up to 20. B12 at 18 still leaves room to gorge on third-choice ACC schools once the Super-2 take who they want. 18 could also make for a fairly tidy 5-2-2 schedule with 6 team pods.
One school I’d really be eyeing if I were the Big 12 would be UVA. They’ve got the academics for the B1G, but does the latter want to go above 20 schools? Not without a new TV deal imo, and didn’t they just sign one recently?
I guess the PAC12 leftovers can come to the Mountain West
It’s kind of odd seeing this play out from the perspective of a Big 12 fan. Seems just a few years ago our conference was on the verge of collapse with the PAC 10 circling our withering corpse. There’s a part of me that wants to feel a bit of schadenfreude as at the time they were facilitating our downfall. But mostly I’m just sad; the pac 12 has some great fan bases that are about to be left behind in the bloodshed.
