Let's Talk About the New Big 12 Football Schedule Matrix

okay so this is going to be a little bit different of a video than what I normally make uh you know typically I make videos on conference histories and stuff like that and the prime focal point of that is the realignment of conferences and the switching around of teams and stuff like that um this is going to be a little bit more casual you know I'm I'm also a K State guy I spent four years working for the football video Department as a student assistant you know I graduated from there been a Kate guy my whole life so from that point of view I'm really a big 12 guy because that's where Kate lives um so I'm really big on the rivalries and stuff and of course one of the major downsides to this new iteration of the Big 12 as opposed to the past is that all the big-time rivalries really are gone you know 20 years ago this conference had the Red River shootout it had bedum it had Colorado Nebraska uh the Border War U Nebraska just so many high-profile High hatred sorts of rivalry games and once those teams all left to other conferences it really just left the conference with a few holes essentially and so in the Big 12 announced they were adding all these new teams there was a hope that since the conference seemed to be prioritizing rivalries with expansion you know uh grabbing Utah for BYU grabbing Colorado for the old big eight schools uh grabbing the Arizona schools together giving West Virginia an old Big East rival in Cincy that the scheduling would sort of prioritize those rivalries too uh but a couple of weeks ago the Big 12 released its 2024 scheduling Matrix for football and that is very clearly not the case I'm going to scroll through these in the background uh you can pause and see all them but one thing that's very clear is that the Big 12 has only protected four rivalries to be played every year you get the holy war with Utah and BYU uh duel in the desert with Arizona and ASU sunflower Showdown with Kate and KU and the Revival re with Baylor and TCU that's it no farmageddon no West Virginia Cincinnati no uh battle for the saddle really no Texas Tech with anybody in Texas um there are a few reasons for this first is that there really isn't much connecting any of the new additions to the rest of them except for maybe Houston since they have a history with all the Texas schools and the other American editions like Cincy and UCF so by forcing every team to have played the other 15 schools at least once in a 4-year span you create a familiarity as weird as it is for UCF to be in a conference with Arizona now like the big 12 really wants it to feel like yes UCF will play Arizona this isn't a few conferences in one we really do want to be a mega conference so if you go with a pod system what's called a 336 there's a big chance if you're say Arizona that you only play in Orlando once in like six years right so let's say in a pod system you're in the west pod You'll Play the members of the East pod every 3 years but you'll only be out there once for one of those teams so if the team travels to you that year you have to wait now maybe three more years for return trip or even just a chance to see him again now that divisions are gone so this scheduling system sort of gives a big 12 members time to mesh uh everyone will play everyone at least twice conference feels a lot Cozier that sort of thing uh that's one positive to it that's something commissioner ymark leaned in heavily when he announced the schedule uh he said I took this from Sports Illustrated as we look towards the future of the conference we are thrilled to introduce the first football scheduling Matrix for the new look big 12 I'm grateful to our membership for their support throughout the scheduling process in this model competitive balance and student athlete Wellness was prioritized rivalries will be protected and new matchups will be introduced the excitement and parody this conference is known for will continue for years to come so they're also definitely trying to give the league time to create new rivalries between members which I also understand like Colorado might form one with West Virginia or Houston and UCF could finally become the Space Race you know or Arizona KU could become the biggest basketball rivalry everyone thinks it can be you know just just one of those deals but it feels like the negatives are just too painful at this point and K State's right in the center of one of them so I feel at least a little qualified to be talking about it uh there are football rivalries that have been played more often and with longer streaks than K State and Iowa state which the fan base refers to as farming eddon but there has not been a single interruption in that football game start to present so I it's the longest running college football rivalry to have never been interrupted I think the language is like it might not be a big ticket rivalry to the rest of the country like most of you guys probably don't care about this game but this is a game of familiarity and recently contempt for these two schools like this game means something to us uh but since it's not protected it's just gone in 2027 like it'll Peak out at 109 games or whatever and this isn't the only game that we would have liked to have protected and isn't going to be like some people can talk about the Rocky Mountain Showdown not being protected Utah Colorado uh I mean as the fan bases for those two teams like they kind of don't care that was a forced rivalry from the Pack 12 that failed to really achieve anything like if if anything those two schools like like each other more than dislike each other uh but there are so many other games that could have been protected that just flat out weren't even if they weren't necessarily rivalries like Cincinnati West Virginia is technically a rivalry but it isn't all that heated probably never was but at the same time those two schools are relatively close for this new Big 12 Conference it make total sense for them to play each other every year if only for like travel you know uh same with West Virginia UCF like those Eastern teams are on an island out there it just makes sense for them to be in a pod or have some sort of scheduling agreement uh but nope get Arizona and you'll like it but farming Edon was really the most absurd game to not protect even if that would mean K State had two protected rivalries like other than the sunflower Showdown like this is the only other Marque Marque Marquee old big eight game left right now a response letter purportedly from Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pard to a fan asking why the game wasn't kept circulated quite a bit uh that explained the reasoning I I should note that this was pushed by Iowa State meme accounts Cyclone Larry if you know Iowa State you know about Cyclone Larry the language in it does seem a bit fishy so take it with as many grains of salt as you can find but if this letter is genuine it contains quite a bit of information uh for one the athletic directors themselves are happy with the schedule uh which means they probably work together to select this as the best option in their eyes even more than a pod system or something else uh the second paragraph being written the way it does makes me believe it's faked more than being circulated by Cyclone Larry of all accounts the way this is written doesn't feel at all like it was written by a division one athletic director to a random fan in an email I mean what athletic director would throw their own fans under the bus for not traveling and K State's been pushing pharmageddon as a rivalry game as much if not more than Iowa state has been recently like that's just my perception of it as as a K State fan so that angle doesn't really make sense either so I mean choose to take as much from this as you'd like I think it isn't real personally but as far as I'm aware like it hasn't officially been debunked yet I could be wrong but I don't know so obviously I asked in a community post earlier how you guys felt about the schedules um the most important thing that I took away from it was that a majority of my subscribers don't care about the Big 12 at all uh just under 700 of you guys said you don't care about the schedule at all and I I know a lot of my viewer base is in the South so you're probably SEC ACC Sun Belt you know that sort of thing uh I'm a kstate guy a big 12 guy so that's my angle here but a majority of the Big 12 fans there actively dislike it and that's something I've seen mirrored in the Twitter and Reddit responses and as I'm sure you can figure out that I'm not a fan of it either as someone who has to watch yearly farmageddon die in 2027 uh but some of you guys had some interesting takes here in the comments of that post that I thought I'd get into because there are some good points being made here uh Alex s says I like no divisions as it is objectively better for college football playoff hopes and I enjoy the diversity of matchups but I think they should have kept KSU ISU as a rivalry match up no harm in KSU having two rivalries the whole no divisions thing is objectively true like just about every other conference is starting to move away from divisions and towards just putting their two best teams in the conference in their championship game like that that's the way that they've determined is the best way to put a team in the championship game but yeah farmer geddon being lost is a yearly game hurts uh you knew that already uh John schaver actually disagrees with me on pods being the prime option he disagrees that the schedule promotes rivalries and I actually kind of agree with that like in in what world do Colorado playing Cincinnati twice magically create a rivalry between those two schools like most rivalries occur due to years upon years of history or some type of geographic or cultural similarity like close games don't do it like as a Kate fan I don't consider Kate TCU a game that will become a rivalry even though those games have gotten testy at times it it's just a rough game you know there's way more of history between us and Oklahoma State and even that game doesn't really count as a rivalry so NC YouTube and Gracie here though point out that the conference doesn't really have any rivalries uh and from an Outsiders perspective that's probably true but that really got me thinking because inside the Big 12 there are some testy games that might not get recognized from the rest of the country but have the capability to become rivalries like like really quick like that uh like I think about the Xerox bull or the dust bull uh between Tech and Oklahoma State how there's some real beef there between those two schools uh Texas and Oklahoma leaving like those two are in Prime position to make that into a real rivalry because the bad blood's already there um I think to cinc West Virginia that game's interesting because there's a lot of shared Big East history but it's another one of those games like Utah Colorado that just doesn't really have the vibrancy at the moment uh because of the proximity they have with each other and that history existing it really could become a rivalry I I think back to Cincy pit River City rivalry as an example of somewhat forced Regional rivalry with ciny in the past cuz the Paddle Wheel trophy like I think it wasn't even brought out for the game this season like ciny really only cares about the rivals in Louisville and Miami of Ohio and neither of those two are conference Rivals the fact that they don't have a rival in conference doesn't necessarily mean that they should rush into one with West Virginia but they're more likely to create one with them I think than anyone else except for maybe I don't know UCF uh CU that's the end conference team they hate the most right now in in know speaking of UCF it's a little bit like West Virginia UCF you know those two are historically chippy teams way out east that I think could develop a rivalry if they played each other more often and really with UCF I'm surprised they don't have much of a rivalry with Houston they call themselves space you Houston's done some stuff with NASA in the past neither of them really deserve to be called space u since Purdue exists but that's a different conversation for an entirely different time um but if I were to do conference scheduling I I definitely would have preferred the Pod system it's not perfect of course but with conferences getting so large there's really no perfect way to formulate the conference schedule anymore um easiest pod system I could come up with had four pods you know Western Central northern southern Eastern um I did this kind of interestingly as you'll see with the Central and Eastern pods but let me try to explain so in the west you have the Utah and Arizona schools this pod has a lot of history uh each of these schools being members of The Wack at some point in their history maybe all at the same time if I'm correct I could be wrong uh two of the League's strongest rivalries are kept here they play teams close to each other regionally like that's a solid po that's one of four then we go to the South which is an interesting one uh because I left Colorado out of the western pod they end up in the central pod so Oklahoma State ends up in the southern pod uh but this ends up working out pretty well for the conference though because the dust bow ends up fitting pretty well in that slate OSU joins Tech Baylor and TCU for the this one Tech has a lot of Rivals from the old Southwest but not any they could really claim to be their number one they've had a few scrummy games with Houston lately but their real history lies with you know Texas and ANM both of which are gone now so that being said they do have long histories with both Baylor and TCU and Oklahoma State of course has been getting testy recently so that's a new rivalry for the conference to focus on up north to the central or the northern pod we have Colorado K State Kansas and Iowa State these old big eight rivals hate each other back in the 99s and with Colorado coming back it just makes too much sense not to bring back some of the old Big 12 North uh some Colorado fans online have distinct memories of games against Kate being testy during the SN years uh I just can't see the blue collar fan bases of like K State or Iowa State really getting along with the new blood Colorado fan base at the moment like this could have ended up just being a pod full of hate and that would have been a good thing you know farming geddon and the sunflower Showdown stick around two another thing that gets lost in the Matrix stuff is that ku's been a longtime opponent for Iowa State too so that game gets preserved um probably the Pod that makes the most sense and then we get to the East uh the issue with the East is that there are only three Eastern Time Zone teams I think in the Big 12 so one school would have had to be the odd man out and I chose Houston mainly because you know despite them being old members of the Southwest they do have a lot more recent history against Cincy and UCF as members than the Americans so they just make more sense than Iowa State to be added and like I said before those teams don't really have any rivalries out here it's more like a pod of travel convenience it's just way easier to get to West Virginia from UCF or Cincinnati than it would be from like Provo Utah every year and a pod system really works best in a 336 conference schedule so what's the 336 so the 336 has three sections in it first three is your non-conference games which can be scheduled you know throughout the year um next three are your pod games you play those Conference teams every year and then the six is some combination of other conference teams um the most popular version of this has four of those six games being against members of a specific pod so one year you'd play like all the members of the western pod the next you'd play all the members of the Eastern pod whatever like what the NFL does and then there's two more conference games in there that might be protected rivalries from outside pods or whatever can be thrown in there to make the schedule work uh so that's how I would do it clearly it's a terrible idea since they didn't go with it um and maybe it's a good thing that they didn't go with it I don't know I might eventually make a video predicting the future rivalries the Big 12 like the x- Rox bull you know but for now this is the situation the big 12's dealing with when it comes to scheduling and rivalries I'm interested in how you guys feel about this though uh especially from those of you that are outside the Big 12 cuz most people inside the Big 12 hate it like it just feels like such a massive Miss just because a game doesn't have a name doesn't mean it's not important like I I think about Texas they have a history with just about every Old Southwest school and none of those games are protected I I think about Oklahoma State their biggest rival is gone like they don't even get a protected game against any of the old big eight schools like theoretically they could go an entire season in the future without playing Colorado K State KU or Iowa State under the system like it could happen new rivalries like the dust bow a battle for the saddle are being stunted like West Virginia doesn't get any travel protection with the schools closest to it UCF is just screwed um but hey everybody plays each other um so yeah I'll go back to regular content you expect from me soon uh I just had to get this video out because I think it's important to recognize that conference fre alignment uh especially in a conference as spread out as the Big 12 doesn't have to stunt the growth of its own Brands just so every team can play each other like rivalries are a fun part of college sports you know and it's Unique to it as a Chiefs fan like Chiefs Raiders is heated but it's nowhere near College sports rivalries like Pro Sports just aren't even close um so yeah let me know have a great weekend stay safe be civil in the comments and uh I'll see you next time