82 Days Until Kansas Football: The Impact of Big 12 Conference Expansion
On Friday, news broke that three of the schools poised to join the Big 12 Conference had reached an agreement with American Athletic Conference to allow them to leave and join the conference for the 2023 season. This was the outcome that the Big 12 was expecting back when they announced that the membership would be expanding, but it is now official.
The Kansas Jayhawks officially reacted on Twitter:
But while conference expansion was inevitable, it will mean some big changes for the Kansas Football team. So let's look at a few of the big impacts:
Scheduling Changes
The immediate impact is on the non-conference schedule for next year. Currently, the Jayhawks are beginning a home-and-home series with the Houston Cougars. They play on the road this season and were scheduled to host the return game next season.
While it isn't unheard of for conference opponents to play a non-conference matchup, there is a really good chance that this game will be canceled and the Jayhawks will have to find a new non-conference opponent on short notice.
Additionally, the larger number of teams will change the conference scheduling format. There are not a lot of details right now, but at the very least the round-robin format will have to end. We'll take a look at some proposals for the new Big 12 later in the countdown, but the main takeaway is that Kansas will no longer be playing every conference opponent every season.
Strength of Schedule
Whatever the new scheduling arrangement is, one big boon will be the ability to miss some opponents as part of the conference schedule. One of the hardest parts of playing in the round-robin Big 12 is that teams do not have the ability to benefit from scheduling luck. No matter who the best teams in the conference are in any particular year, Kansas has no choice but to play all of them.
But in a 14-team (and later 12-team) Big 12 conference, the schedules will have to be unbalanced. That opens up the possibility for a 2007-type season, where Kansas misses most of the other good teams in the conference and gets an opportunity to play for an opportunity to go to the conference championship game.
Dominant Position Up For Grabs
With Oklahoma and Texas leaving, there will no longer be a "blue-blood" school at the top of the conference. There are plenty of schools that could take over the top spot though, including:
- Baylor won the conference last season, but they are by no means a perennial power.
- Oklahoma State has been consistently good under head coach Mike Gundy, but never seems to be able to get over the top.
- Iowa State has seen a resurgence under Matt Campbell, but they took a huge step back last season.
- Cincinnati is coming off of an appearance in the College Football Playoff, but they were a senior-laden team, and it's not clear how much they will be able to sustain.
Everyone else has at least an argument, but there isn't anyone that you can immediately pencil into the conference championship game each year, giving the Jayhawks a legitimate chance to build towards a much better position in the pecking order.
Kansas fans should see these changes as an opportunity. It will be a chance for the Jayhawks to shake up their circumstances a bit, and hopefully make it a bit easier to gain some ground back towards a consistently respectable football program.
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