NCAA Basketball: Examining 10 potential moves in conference realignment

Iowa State to Big Ten

The Big 12 remains functional, especially with the addition of those four new universities. Still, those rumors from last month on the landing spots for the Big 12 teams could be prophetic. We’ve already considered Kansas’s potential in the Big 12, but Iowa State could make for a fantastic addition as well, especially if paired with the Jayhawks.

There are a number of directions the Big Ten could realistically go to rebuild their numbers, but Iowa State makes sense as a potential option. While the recent additions of Nebraska and Rutgers are still in the process of working out, the Cyclones immediately offer a great football program and a basketball team with the potential to be great again very soon. They give Iowa their natural rival, though one has to wonder if the Hawkeyes would want to share the state with them.

The Big Ten is sitting at fourteen schools at the present time and an expansion to sixteen would keep them on par with the SEC, and perhaps with what other leagues plan to do. Proactively, Iowa State makes sense for a number of reasons, especially since it’d be difficult to pluck a team from the ACC or SEC these days.

There’s no question that Iowa State would see stiffer competition in the Big Ten compared to the Big 12, you just have to wonder the feasibility of the move now that the Big 12 added those new schools and is no longer on the verge of sudden collapse.