When rumors started leaking out that Texas and Oklahoma could be leaving the Big 12 in the coming years, it sent fans of the other eight schools into a frenzy. 

The gap between haves and have-nots in college football has never been higher. The stratification between the top and bottom of college football is moving from the millions to the tens of millions to the hundreds of millions. 

With Texas and Oklahoma looking at their options, it puts the leftovers’ positions in major college football into a precarious position. Already, fan bases are building their exit strategies to find safe harbor in other power conferences. As a lifelong Big 12 watcher, color me skeptical. 

There’s a reason the Big 12 was always at the center of realignment rumors for the past decade. This post-2012 league was always an island of misfit toys. 

Kansas brings blue blood value on the basketball side, but comes with the price of truly miserable football. Iowa State has a wonderfully engaged fan base, but limited funding and success to sell historically. Oklahoma State is in its best period since Barry Sanders, but what is the upside if they were to join another league? 

Baylor and TCU have been highly successful athletically, but there’s a reality that both are also small private schools.Texas Tech has some intrigue, but comes without any real geographic peers outside of the Big 12. Outside of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas for basketball reasons, no Big 12 program ranked higher than No. 40 nationally in revenue among public institutions. That school was West Virginia, which was passed over by the ACC and SEC in 2012. 

All that to say, the other eight Big 12 institutions by no means have a guaranteed better landing spot on the horizon. And for that reason, it’s time for commissioner Bob Bowlsby and the Big 12 to be proactive. 

If Texas and Oklahoma officially make plans to leave, the strongest move the Big 12 could make is aggressively going after the top layer of the Group of Five, with a special focus on tying together a strong geographic league. Houston should be a first call, like it should have been last time. SMU should come. BYU, Memphis, UCF, Cincinnati, Appalachian State, Louisiana, Boise State should all be considered. 

Pick four of the schools, whichever ones make sense competitively, geographically and culturally. All of the schools I mentioned have perennially been in the top 25 discussion, both in football and basketball. While nothing will make up for the vacuum at the top of the league, it immediately would make the Big 12 a deep league filled with great programs.

Let’s say for argument’s sake that the new league takes SMU, Houston, UCF and Memphis. The league would have a handful of conference championships and New Year’s Six bowl wins to its name, along with a solid geographic footprint and some fast-growing brands. Mix that with what Baylor, Iowa State, TCU and several others have done over the past few years and you have a very exciting football league. 

Would this league be as strong as one featuring Oklahoma and Texas? Absolutely not. Would it be a head and shoulders above the Group of Five from a competition perspective and maybe even competitive with the Pac 12 and ACC in certain years? Sure, maybe. 

With the way the Big 12’s television contracts work, the networks would have to pay new institutions at a Big 12 level. That would be a strong enticement for those schools to strongly consider a Big 12 offer, even if it’s a relatively short-term windfall. The Big 12 paid out more than $34 million this year, even in a pandemic year. The AAC pays out fewer than $10 million. 

This Big 12 3.0 would certainly lose a substantial amount of that payout in its next television contract. But still, finding a happy medium between the two television payouts will allow the existing members to avoid slipping through the cracks. 

There’s also a life vest coming down the pipe: The expanded College Football Playoff. Six conference champions are guaranteed a spot in the proposed system. Not only would the Big 12 certainly be able to cement itself as one of the top six heading forward, it would also potentially put a dent in the AAC, its top competitor.

Suddenly, teams like TCU, Oklahoma State, Baylor and even SMU or Houston will be in the College Football Playoff conversation every year. They will likely never win, but that’s no different than the situation any of the other schools are in right now. Being right on the edge of that national conversation is still enough to keep a respectable level of attention and recruiting coming to these Big 12 schools, even with the blue bloods gone. 

Let’s be frank. If the Big 12 can do anything to keep Texas and Oklahoma in the league, they must do it. If it means even more disparate revenue gaps, so be it. The rising tide and implicit credibility of the blue bloods lifts all boats. We’ve seen the Pac 12 struggle for national attention as its lone blue blood languished. 

But if Texas and Oklahoma do leave – which feels highly likely – all is not lost. The Big 12 just won the national championship in men’s basketball last season. It won women’s basketball and men’s track and field the year before. Holding the field and adding a few of those other options could make the Big 12 a real powerhouse basketball conference. 

According to Yahoo Sports, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby “preached patience and togetherness” at a meeting with the eight remaining institutions on Thursday. Without question, all eight will – and should – search out their options, maybe as soon as today.

If Bowlsby can be assertive, there still could be a stable future for the Big 12 ahead. And by the way, maybe with 12 teams this time around.