The Realignment That Wasn't: The Big 12 in 2016

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Host emeritus Steven Godfrey joins Richard and Alex for a look back at the Big 12’s extremely public flirtation with expansion a full decade ago. It was a strange spring and summer in 2016, as the Big 12 basically put on realignment tryouts for a long list of schools including several (BYU, UCF, Houston, and Cincinnati) who did get into the conference — but not until years later, when others dominoes had fallen. Let’s revisit the summer of realignment that wasn’t, and then let’s think about how it changed the next decade of college football.

In this episode:

* 0:00: Why the realignment fashion show became so public

* 8:10: The now-quaint factors that drove realignment decisions back then

* 12:28: The candidate pool, including Houston and Cincinnati’s very different campaigns, BYU’s many complications, UCF before the Scott Frost/Josh Heupel run, and SMU before it became an ACC playoff team

* 32:02: Why the process came down to BYU, Cincinnati, and Houston. (Also, why the Big 12 was genuinely scared of Houston)

* 43:48: Counterfactuals: whether earlier expansion would have changed Texas and Oklahoma’s exit, the Pac-12’s collapse, or the expanded playoff’s politics around non-power teams

* 56:08: The afterlife of the public audition, from Memphis and Sacramento State to the next round of conference-movement anxiety.

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Producer: Anthony Vito