Big 12 Basketball: Top 5 candidates to join league in potential realignment

1. Houston

Like with SMU, mentioned earlier in the piece, Houston is a former Southwest Conference team and would make perfect sense to pair again with the Texan schools of the Big 12. However, what favors Houston greatly over the other programs in the state is that both their basketball and football programs are in fantastic shape in recent years. This would be a move based on both geography and talent.

Houston football has seen incredible play under future power conference coaches like Art Briles, Kevin Sumlin, and Tom Herman. They’d do well against their regional rivals in the Big 12. After a long stretch of mediocrity, the basketball program is finally thriving again in recent years under Kelvin Sampson. Long past are the days were Guy Lewis led the Cougars to five Final Fours, but perhaps another era of success is on the horizon.

Houston is the best candidate to join the Big 12 and they seem like a perfect entrant for all of these reasons. They’d immediately be competitive in these sports, and the football program would certainly enjoy joining the Power 5. The school is right in the conference’s footprint and they already have experience with many of these programs.

We’ve taken a closer look at some of the best candidates for expansion for the Big 12. It’s possible the conference chooses not to expand in the immediate future, but any of these options would be fantastic choices to expand the footprint of the league.