BOULDER — From 5,280 feet, it looks more like a crazy wall or a conspiracy board than a conference map.
The new Big 12 is a mess of pins connected by string, hope and quiet desperation. One of the longest stretches 2,074 miles, from Morgantown, W. Va. to Tucson, Ariz., from sweetgum trees to saguaros, with a layover in Cincinnati and a detour in central Iowa.
This ain’t your daddy’s Big 12.
Here’s what the Buffs’ new league isn’t: The back-biting conference they fled in 2010. No, the Big 12 of 2024 is a brand name with very few of its major brands (Oklahoma, Texas chief among them) still in the fold.
Here’s what it is: Stable. For now. The trick for CU — specifically when it comes to football — is to take advantage of a league where the Buffs feel, for once, like one of the bigger brands on the marquee.
What the new Big 12 lacks in star programs it more than makes for in opportunity. The biggest dogs on the block aren’t Texas, Oklahoma, USC, Oregon or Washington. It’s Utah. Oklahoma State. Kansas State. Win this league, and there’s a seat at the College Football Playoffs table. Win it consistently, and there could be a seat waiting in the Big Ten or SEC — or in some hypothetical college football breakaway “super league” that feels more inevitable than ever before.
“I don’t think CU has ever been in a better position, football-wise,” Big Ten Network analyst and former Buffs offensive coordinator Gerry DiNardo told The Denver Post.
RELATED: CU Buffs fans, meet the new Big 12
“Tell me the schools that have a better history than CU in the Big 12. When (the Buffs) were in the Big Eight, it was Oklahoma, Nebraska. In the Pac-12, it was USC, Washington and Oregon. Right now, CU has an opportunity it’s never had in the history of (the football program).”
“Good place to start”
So, is the Big 12 good for CU? It depends on whom you ask.
When the Buffs take part in their first official function as a member of the reconstituted Big 12, football media days that run Tuesday and Wednesday in Las Vegas, a lot of the names CU fans grew to hate won’t be there. No Cornhuskers. No Texas A&M. No Missouri, complaining about five downs. No Texas, complaining about everything else.
“I think it’s an easier move for us than it is for USC and UCLA, as well as Oregon and Washington, to go to the Big Ten,” said former Buffs football coach and radio analyst Gary Barnett, who led CU to three Big 12 football championship games (2002, ’04, ’05).
“We’ve been here before. Our fans know what to expect. And the league’s grown and gotten better. Even though it’s lost Texas and Oklahoma, it’s still a solid league. I think the way you look at it is, instead of five or six teams you don’t want to play — USC, UCLA, Oklahoma, Washington, Oregon, (schools) you don’t want to play — well, you don’t have to. At least you’re not in a hole. It’s a pretty good place to start.”
The new-look Big 12 is a national conference now, as opposed to a regional one, with schools in 10 states and three time zones. When the Pac-12 sank, CU found a lifeboat — which is more than can be said for former league compatriots Oregon State and Washington State, now essentially provisional members of the Mountain West Conference.
The flip side is a 16-team collective that feels a bit like an island of misfit toys — a patchwork of old Big Eight stalwarts the Big Ten and SEC didn’t want (Iowa State, K-State, Oklahoma State); Pac-12 schools that also weren’t enticing enough for the Power 2 (Arizona, Arizona State, Utah); Southwest Conference minnows (Baylor, TCU, Houston); the cream of the American Athletic Conference (UCF, Cincinnati); and … well, BYU.
Cynics say the Big 12 is college football’s new limbo, a waiting room for schools hoping for another round of SEC or Big Ten expansion. That’s with good reason, given that a Big Ten school such as Nebraska will receive $40 million more each year in television revenue than CU, and almost $10 million more annually in College Football Playoff payouts.
But for now, what’s old is new again. The Buffs moved to the expanded Big 12 for better television revenue and to leave behind the rampant instability of their former league. The move comes 14 summers after CU announced it was leaving the Big 12 for the expanded Pac-12 because of … better television revenue and rampant instability in its former league. Deja, meet vu.
The Big 12 of 2024 could last 50 years. It could last seven. It’s unclear if it will provide the Buffs with the stability it has sought for two decades, or just serve as a waystation until the next wave of realignment shuffles the deck again.
College sports, meanwhile, is in the middle of its most transformative period in more than a century, thanks to the transfer portal, Name-Image-Likeness legislation, and a series of legal blows that have crippled the NCAA’s decades-long framing of amateur athletics.
Players will soon share in a portion of the millions of dollars generated by college sports media rights, which has athletic departments scrambling for new and sustainable sources of revenue. After decades of constancy, nothing in big-time collegiate athletics — not players, not coaches, not administrators, not rivals, not leagues, not television partners — feels permanent anymore.
How CU got here, and where Buffs could go next
The Buffs are one of four teams, colloquially dubbed “The Four-Corners Schools,” who announced last summer that they would be leaving the Pac-12 at the end of the 2023-24 athletic year.
CU was the first to accept an offer from the Big 12, followed shortly by Arizona, Arizona State and Utah.
“The Buffaloes have a rich history in college athletics, and their strong brand paired with a loyal fan base and the Denver/Boulder market makes them an ideal fit for our league,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said in a statement emailed to The Post. “CU athletics has a great leader with (athletic director) Rick George, someone I’ve worked with during the onboarding process, and someone I consider a friend.
“As the Big 12 continues to build its brand on and off the field and showcase our parity, CU will play a key role in our future success as a league.”
That parity? It’s real. With Oklahoma and Texas departing for the SEC, CU is now the Big 12 member to have most recently won a national FBS title in football — and that was back in 1990.
Among NCAA athletic departments during the 2021-22 fiscal year, CU’s $94.9 million in athletic revenue ranked 51st, nationally, per USA Today. That would’ve placed 10th among 13 of the 16 Big 12 schools for which USA Today had data. “The Deion Sanders Effect” is expected to boost that number significantly in future annual reports. Yet the revenue gaps between Big 12 departments aren’t massive, at least when compared to their Big Ten or ACC peers, with those 13 ranking as high as No. 31 and as low as No. 56 in revenue.
As part of the Big 12’s contracts with ESPN and FOX Sports, CU is expected to receive roughly $22 million in broadcast revenue for the ’24-25 fiscal year. That total is expected to climb to roughly $32 million per year from ’25-26 through ’30-31.
That’s a bump up from the $23 million per school reportedly offered by Apple TV as part of a streaming deal that was rejected by Pac-12 presidents last year, although that figure could have grown depending on subscription benchmarks.
That said, the Big 12’s future earnings still lag significantly behind the Big Ten and SEC. The former is expected to distribute about $72 million to each of its members through 2030; the latter will dole out a reported $69 million per school through 2034.
“I think it was shocking to everyone that the Pac-12’s demise occurred so rapidly,” former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told The Post. “I was in the Pac-12 when CU came in (in 2010) and was almost there when (the Buffs) came back to the Big 12. I don’t blame them for striving for security. If there is such a thing.”
George and outgoing CU chancellor Phil DiStefano declined requests from The Post for comment on the Buffs’ timetable for departing the Pac-12. Barnett said he’d caught wind of the Buffs and peer schools exploring overtures from other conferences as far back as 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic slashed revenues and exacerbated financial tensions.
“Seeing (the Pac-12) continue to shoot off one toe after another,” Barnett said, “(CU officials) knew, eventually, there weren’t going to be any toes. They wanted to be in the best place they possibly could. No one was really looking, but they didn’t want to pass up an opportunity that might be better for them than where they were now.”
Legal consequences, specifically a reported settlement in House vs. NCAA in California, have opened the door for student-athletes to be directly compensated by college athletic departments. Initial estimates have pegged the annual costs in revenue-sharing with players for a school such as CU at roughly $20 million per year.
Which means the expiration of television contracts will likely determine the future of the Big 12 — and CU’s place within it. The Big 12’s partnerships are up in 2031; the Big Ten’s in 2030; the SEC’s in 2034 and the ACC’s in 2036.
“Those points in time, historically, have been the times when change seems to happen,” former FOX Sports Networks president Bob Thompson told The Post. “And it’s not coincidental. Conferences are looking to grow, and that’s when it’s time to make your move because you can do that in conjunction with your television partners.”
Experts also wonder if a system in which the Big Ten and SEC continue to pull farther and farther away from the rest is sustainable. Barnett sees a college football “Premier League,” not unlike the pyramid system utilized in European professional soccer, coming down the pike.
That breakaway league, the coach theorized, would likely feature 40 or so schools; unionized contracts for players; the possibility of relegation to and promotion from, a lower tier of teams; its own commissioner … and one very, very lucrative TV deal.
So would CU football, at present, make that cut?
“Oh, I wouldn’t think so, right now,” Barnett replied. “(But) coach Sanders was hired to hopefully create enough buzz and enough (television exposure) that should it come down to that, and as a result of winning enough games, creating enough buzz, (CU) makes enough money and gets enough support … that it would get (the Buffs) in there.”
Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.
