The 12 big schools are moving forward despite the fact that the conference office does not yet have a formal plan for the college football season.
Oklahoma will begin preseason camp on Friday in preparation for its season opening tentatively scheduled for August 29. Meanwhile, Big 12 managers aren’t scheduled to make a decision on next season’s format amid the COVID-19 pandemic until Monday afternoon.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told ESPN on Wednesday that the league will present four to five different scheduling plans to league administrators at Monday’s meeting. The top candidate, in Bowlsby’s eyes at least, is a full 12-game schedule. He has long seen it as the first choice, with something below a 12-game schedule to back up the conference.
What is becoming increasingly possible for Big 12, regardless of the format of the calendar, is a start date of August 29. The Big 12 is the only major conference willing to start the season in Week 0 after the NCAA granted the Football Bowl Branch a general exemption to move games to the last Saturday in August. Oklahoma and the state of Missouri received a waiver last week, allowing non-conference enemies to move their first game of the season from September 5 to August 29 in Norman, Oklahoma. In doing so, the NCAA also allows those teams to start preseason camps four weeks before the start. OU is scheduled to begin practice on Friday and the state of Missouri will begin on Saturday.
But what could the other four programming models be like? Typical models discussed and adopted elsewhere in Power 5 conferences.
The Big 12, consisting of 10 teams, will consider a nine-game conference calendar, a 10-game conference calendar, a nine-plus-1 calendar, a 10-plus-1 calendar and a full 12-game calendar, sources said. at 247Sports. The possibility of a 10-game conference schedule would mean teams would have to bow to a common conference opponent, although that idea has lost traction in recent weeks.
The other factor is the SEC, which can decide as early as Thursday whether to move forward with a conference-only schedule. The SEC and Big 12 share four games: Ole Miss vs. Baylor in Houston; Tennessee in Oklahoma on September 12; Texas at LSU on September 12; and Vanderbilt at Kansas State on September 19. Should the SEC advance with a conference-only schedule, the Big 12 will rush to complete those dates in case they maintain a 12-game schedule or move forward with one of their alternative plans.
In essence, the dominoes are still falling and the Big 12 could be the final Power 5 conference to make a decision. ACC’s 10-plus-1 model put the scheduling decision in SEC court Wednesday. The ACC and the SEC share four games, which the ACC wants to keep. However, the decision will be made by the SEC if those in-state rivalry games (Georgia-Georgia Tech; Kentucky-Louisville; Florida-Florida State and South Carolina-Clemson) are kept alive at the time of a pandemic.
The Big 12 timeline shows it will be the final domino, reacting the next week after the SEC’s decision.
Big Ten and Pac-12 previously announced plans to switch to a conference-only schedule. The Pac-12 could launch a timeline as early as Friday, an industry source told 247Sports. The Big Ten is expected to announce a schedule next week, according to the Chicago Tribune.
