The college football landscape is changing drastically and BYU Football may be right in the middle of it.
With the reports of Oklahoma and Texas wanting to join the SEC going from a hot take report to now a very credible story, it finally appears that the landscape of college football is finally about to blow up.
The changes that appear to be coming have been building up as NIL, transfer portal, changing tv contracts and Playoff expansion have seemed to hit the sport all at one time.
But what will the changes be? Is it possible that the changes will be limited to only a handful of teams, or will the entire college football landscape be unrecognizable in five years? Both are possible, but the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.
Although there are endless possibilities of how these changes may take place, I’ve come up with ten that are likely very possible or being talked about.
10 – Big 12 Adds Teams to Make a True Big 12
Assuming that Oklahoma and Texas leave, there will be eight remaining teams that are a mixture of good and bad P5 teams. The best remaining teams would be Oklahoma State and Iowa State while the Kansas schools and remaining Texas schools would look more like G5 caliber teams.
Obviously the Big 12 is not going to want to either dismantle or drop down to the G5 level so they would likely go after some of the best G5 schools and see if they can perhaps get some SEC schools to come to the Big 12.
In this scenario, the Big 12 would not just replace Texas and Oklahoma with Missouri and Arkansas. That would be a major step down. Instead, they would likely target those two schools as well as Nebraska and a G5 school which could be BYU, Houston, Memphis, Cincinnati or UCF.
Any of the P5 schools that the Big 12 could not get would be replaced with the G5 schools mentioned above.
That would be the end of the drama and no other conferences would be affected.
Chances of happening: Relatively High*
*I don’t see the Big 12 getting three P5 schools, but Arkansas and Missouri just sound like Big 12 schools. Arkansas and Missouri joining + 2 G5’s would lower the prestige of the Big 12 from where it is currently, but would still keep the conference at the P5 level.