The Case for Notre Dame to Join the Big 12

With summer on the way and any number of conference-realignment shenanigans possible in the college football landscape, I thought I would take some time over the next few weeks to survey all the different possible long-term destinations for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and see if I could talk myself, and possibly some of you, into them. These options will include the Irish maintaining the status quo of independence along with alignment to all of the remaining major conferences: the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, and even the SEC. I’ll do my best to not tip my hand as to my own opinion during this process and just adopt the perspective of someone arguing for this, and in return I’ll ask that we keep the feedback from getting too personal.

See here the previous two entries in this series on remaining independent and the more outlandish option of joining the SEC. This week, we’ll be looking at another seemingly unlikely option: joining the Big 12.

Being honest with you all, I thought the SEC was going to be the hardest conference to make the case for because it seemed so bizarre, but I think this one is actually harder. This is a move that would have all the downsides of joining the SEC – lack of culture fit, no in-conference rivalries, burning bridges with Big 10 rivals, etc. – without the upsides of conference prestige and thrilling schedules year in and year out.

The Big 12 has opted to survive the realignment era by emphasizing quantity over quality; having lost its biggest brands and most historically successful programs over the last decade-plus, it has sought to recreate them in the aggregate by scooping up historical also-rans and realignment orphans. The result is a Frankenstein’s conference seemingly too big to fail, but also a husk of of its former dynamism with programs that range, historically, from bad to middling.

Let’s be real. Would anyone be excited about rewarding the creepy long-distance infatuations of the BYU Cougars with an (inevitably) annualized rivalry? Regular road trips to Lawrence and Ames? UCF in South Bend? Maybe try to create a facsimile of the old midwestern rivalries we love and miss with the Cincinnati Bearcats? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

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With all of that up front, making the case for this is going to be a real stretch. There are really only a couple things we could hang our hats on.

First, for all the hard time I just gave the Big 12 for its lack of quality opponents, it’s not all downside. Oklahoma State, TCU and West Virginia still retain some cachet; the Irish have never played Texas Tech or Kansas State at all, but both would be fun opponents to see. But these are teams that would be fun as middling opponents; hardly anchors for a strong schedule. The Big 12 would also maybe be a fun home for Irish basketball, with Kansas and Houston suddenly becoming peers to the Irish.

The rest of the argument for joining the Big 12 pretty much the mirrors the earlier argument we made for independence. The Irish would join a conference freshly bereft of a hegemon, and could quickly step into the big-dog role. A relatively soft schedule in most years that would create an easier path to the playoff, and unlike independence this path would also give the Irish the ability to ride that soft schedule all the way to a first-round bye. If you are looking for the Irish to join a conference, and you want them to quickly emerge as a conference power, this may be the fastest way to do it.

That’s pretty much it, folks. I’m fully aware that the case here isn’t all that compelling; it’s just the only one that could really be made. See you next week!