UCF, ready to go west?
In what will go down as one of the landmark days in conference realignment history, the Big 12 voted unanimously Friday night to admit Arizona, Arizona State and Utah which comes a week after welcoming Colorado. The moves will become official in 2024-25, making the Big 12 a 16-member conference.
The Big 12 became a lifeboat for the four PAC-12 institutions, which saw their league slowly crumble in the wake of losing USC and UCLA to the Big Ten more than a year ago. Without the two Los Angeles schools, PAC-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff was unable to secure a suitable television contract for its remaining members. Any chance of PAC-12 survival was effectively ended by the Big Ten earlier on Friday when they invited Oregon and Washington.
The future is murky for the four remaining PAC-12 members - California, Stanford, Oregon State and Washington State. There's now talk of perhaps a merger with the Mountain West.
For UCF, it means a few longer airplane rides though the Knights were already on an geographic island. UCF is totally fine with the tradeoff given their future is secure in a Power Four league.
For fans, Colorado (Denver metro), Utah (Salt Lake City) and Arizona State (Phoenix metro) have direct flights from Orlando International Airport.
Denver - Frontier, Southwest, United
Phoenix - American, Southwest, Spirit
Salt Lake City - Delta
CU (Boulder) is a 40-minute drive from the Denver airport. Arizona (Tucson) is a one hour, 45-minute drive from Phoenix though they do have an airport.
Of the four new additions, UCF Football has history with just one: Arizona State. In 2002, the Knights lost a 46-13 game at ASU that completely unraveled in the second half.
In 2019, there were rumors of a future home-and-home series between the Knights and Sun Devils which was "leaked" by American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco though the deal ultimately failed to materialize.
How will the Big 12 formulate future football schedules? Great question.
They could institute a "pod" setup of four teams. You'd play the other three teams in your pod on an annual basis and rotate between the other 12 opponents. This way, you'd play every team home and away in a four-year span.
I'm sure we'll hear about a scheduling plan in the coming weeks.
