A substantial number of institutions potentially breaking away from the NCAA or Division I is unlikely, Big 12 Conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby contends. Bowlsby, speaking to the Aspen Institute, said he is not concerned about such a move, which has been increasingly entertained in the past year or so amid realignment dominos falling within the sport.
“If 30 schools broke off, you’d take half of them that are traditional winners and they’d become traditional losers,” Bowlsby said about such a rift, via The Athletic’s Chris Vannini.
Bowlsby’s conference is among those substantially impacted by realignment. The Big 12 was at the epicenter of the latest wave of realignment dominos to fall last summer when Oklahoma and Texas, founding members of the conference, announced they will leave to join the SEC no later than 2025. The Big 12 has since confirmed four future members — BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF — to help offset the loss of the Sooners and Longhorns.
Alas, the additions of those four schools can only do so much to mitigate the financial impacts from losing Oklahoma and Texas, who generate roughly half of the Big 12’s existing annual television revenue.
Bowlsby said in August last year that the new look Big 12 could see schools lose as much as $14 million apiece in annual television revenue distributed to the conference, though the additions of the four new members since could lessen that deficit.
