Big 12 Basketball: Examining 9 potential candidates for expansion

The biggest news in college athletics in recent weeks has been the announcement that Oklahoma and Texas will depart the Big 12 for the SEC. Creating what amounts to a super conference in the southeast, the two schools will depart for their new conference in 2025, though the potential to move could come sooner rather than later.

Much like ten years ago, this big movement has seemed to signal the beginning of another round of major realignment in collegiate athletics among the most prominent conferences in the country.

Nearly a decade ago, we saw the Big East drastically change, dropping football and seeing their members depart for the ACC, AAC, Big Ten, and Big 12. We saw a pair of programs bolt from Big 12 to SEC, much like this past week. Numbers were deemed meaningless, as the Big Ten landed on fourteen teams while the Big 12 sat at just ten. The realignment back then was seen as pretty wild, but this round might blow that out of the water.

With Oklahoma and Texas already on the move, the Big 12 now finds itself with just eight members. There have already been rampant rumors that the rest of the members will bolt for other conferences, with rumors of Kansas to the Big Ten popping up most recently. There seems to be a logical place for most of the remaining eight teams to land, but perhaps it won’t come to this.

The Big 12 could find another conference to unite with, or perhaps the league could find a way to add on to its current members. While it may not be the sexiest or most likely situation, we’ll be taking a look at a number of programs that the Big 12 could add to continue the conference into the future.

Obviously, losing programs like Oklahoma and Texas leave a huge gap, but it may not be the end of the world. This conference still has last year’s national champion in basketball, even if two of its historic football powers have left for greener pastures.

Let’s start running through a few of the schools the Big Ten should look to add, keeping in mind that the conference would likely need to add somewhere between two to four teams; that is of course if they don’t lose anybody else in the coming weeks.