AUSTIN, Texas – Farewell Big 12, hello SEC. Texas and Oklahoma are finally making their long-awaited conference switch. But first, it’s time to party with Bevo (the longhorn) and Pitbull (the human). The three-years-in-the-making switch to the Southeastern Conference for two programs that were co-founders of the Big 12 in 1996 officially happens Monday. And for their move to a league where “It Just Means More,” Texas and Oklahoma have scheduled big campus celebrations Sunday and Monday with carnivals, live music, and fireworks. Oklahoma’s even stretches to events statewide.
The SEC Network planned live programming from both campuses over the two days, and Longhorns and Sooners fans had their first chance to buy SEC-branded school merchandise. By mid-afternoon, thousands of fans had poured onto the Texas campus despite heat that flirted near 100 degrees (38 Celsius), as children played on bounce houses, rock walls, and slides. Misters cooled their parents who waited in long lines for autographs, photos with Longhorns coaches, and packed into merchandise tents for gear with the SEC logo.
“This is a day we have been building toward for years,” Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte said. “Our fans are really excited about this. You can tell by the turnout. It just means more to the fans in the Southeast Conference and their schools.”
It’s a moment college sports in general has been building toward in the era of major realignment. The Texas and Oklahoma break from the Big 12 helped trigger myriad conference shifts with more on the way. By the first kickoff of the 2024 season, 11 so-called Power 4 programs will be in new conferences.
The Big Ten will grow to 18 teams with USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington poached from the Pac-12. The beleaguered West Coast league also lost Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona State to the Big 12, and California and Stanford to the Atlantic Coast Conference. SMU leaps from the American Athletic Conference to the ACC on Monday as well.
As for Oklahoma and Texas, they originally planned to join the SEC in 2025, but ultimately reached a financial deal with the Big 12 for an early exit. And they leave with a whole lot of hardware. Between them, the Sooners (14) and Longhorns (four) won 18 Big 12 football titles in 25 years, with Texas winning the crown last season for the first time since 2009. In its final year in the league, Texas won 15 league regular season or tournament championships across all sports, and national titles in volleyball and rowing. Oklahoma capped its final season with its dominant softball program winning its fourth consecutive national title in May. The Sooners beat Texas in the final.
“Texas brings more tradition, more talent, more passion and more fight,” to the SEC, the school said on its athletics website.
All that winning will be much more difficult to duplicate in the SEC. Oklahoma opens its first SEC football schedule at home against Tennessee on Sept. 21. The Longhorns debut at Mississippi State on Sept. 28. Since the start of the College Football Playoff in 2014, SEC schools have won the championship six times. Texas (2005) and Oklahoma (2000) were the only two schools to win national titles in football while in the Big 12.
Some traditional rivalries will be stitched back together, and some torn apart. The Texas-Texas A&M rivalry is reborn. It had been on hiatus since A&M left the Big 12 for the SEC in 2012. Oklahoma’s Bedlam rivalry with Oklahoma State is ruptured.
Rey Torres, a former Longhorns walk-on defensive back who was a letterman by his final season of 1984 and season-ticket holder ever since, said he initially had “mixed emotions” about leaving the Big 12. He and his wife Debi posed for photos in front of the Longhorn marching band’s giant “Big Bertha” drum. “I loved it when the Aggies left,” the Big 12, Torres laughed. “But we’re excited about the SEC. It’s like the best conference in college football.”
And that’s the main thing to be excited about, said Gage Sisco, who brought his 4-year daughter Harper to the Texas party. He held her in his arms while flashing the “Hook’Em Horns” hand sign in a photo in front of a giant “SEC: It Just Means More” sign. “This is something we’ve been wanting since the Aggies moved,” Sisco said. “Now we can prove Texas can play with the big boys.”
Texas spiced things up with Texas A&M last week when it poached Aggies baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle to Austin. At his introductory news conference, Schlossnagle warned Longhorns fans that the SEC is the “major leagues” of college baseball. The league has won the past five national championships.
Texas and Oklahoma planned for big crowds at both celebrations. After the campus carnival, Texas had a scheduled concert by “Mr. Worldwide” pop star Pitbull on a stage underneath the campus’ iconic clock tower, and fireworks. Oklahoma’s celebration started Sunday night with a “Race to the SEC” 5k race through the heart of campus, with midnight sales of SEC merchandise and fireworks. Monday morning, former Sooners coach Barry Switzer will co-host a celebration breakfast in Tulsa and Oklahoma will host a campus party at the football stadium with live music and entertainment.
“We couldn’t be more excited to join the SEC. Our teams are poised for success and look forward to the competition with many of America’s most outstanding universities,” Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione said.
The Big 12 is losing its marquee matchup when the Red River Rivalry is played Saturday for the final time under the league’s umbrella. No. 3 Texas and No. 12 Oklahoma head to the Southeastern Conference in 2024, the same year the Big 12 expands to 16 schools in what the league hopes will be an exciting launch of a new era. But gone will be its most hyped regular-season game, along with the Sooners’ annual Bedlam meeting with Oklahoma State in a league with no other rivalries on par with those two.
“The spotlight of college football” is on this game, said Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, who also had stops in the Pac-12 and in the SEC. He calls Texas-Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas “the best setting in college football” with the howling fans split between orange and crimson. The storied series dates to 1900 and it will belong to the SEC soon enough. It’s one that the Big 12 shouldn’t rush to replace, said Vassilis Dalakas, a sports marketing researcher at San Diego State who specializes in rivalries.
For starters, big rivalries tend to be born out of proximity. Like other conferences being spread out under the latest wave of realignment, the Big 12 now spans three time zones. Proximity is more of a challenge. “It’s a lot easier to sell the heat and passion of the rivalry when the two rival teams are nearby,” Dalakas said. The landscape starting in 2024 “is a weird situation in college sports in general. And I think it does make sense to just figure it out first, see how things settle in the new reality.”
Rivalries also thrive through longstanding traditions, bad blood, title implications, and back-and-forth, nail-biting outcomes. TV viewership pushes interest well beyond state borders. The Longhorns and Sooners check most of those boxes. Every October, they play before more than 92,000 fans in Dallas about three hours from their respective campuses. Except for last year’s 49-0 win by Texas, the series was decided by eight points or less in the eight Red River meetings before that.
From a fan and team perspective, Dalakas believes the Red River Rivalry should retain its intensity once the teams head to the SEC. To the Big 12, though, “that is a big hit. That is a big loss,” he said. “Obviously, part of it is simply losing two marquee programs. But the fact that those two programs had a rivalry with each other added even more of an element of excitement, especially from a branding and marketing standpoint that at least in the short run will be hard to replace or replicate with some other clubs,” Dalakas said.
The Big 12 is of course still promoting the game involving the league’s only two ranked teams on X, formerly Twitter. Both are unbeaten heading into Red River for the first time since 2011. New rivalries could emerge for the Big 12 starting next season when it welcomes Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah, joining four newcomers from this year: BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF. Arizona and Arizona State have played every season since 1946. The winner of the Duel in the Desert is awarded the Territorial Cup. But only three meetings since 2000 have involved a ranked team. Then there’s the Holy War between Big 12 newcomer BYU and 2024 entrant Utah, which have met in 20 of the past 23 seasons.
“That might be an opportunity for the conference to try to market an existing rivalry,” Dalakas said. “Trying to manufacture a rivalry usually doesn’t work. Fans can see through that very easily. If the conference is trying to do something like that, my guess is it will fail pretty bad.”
The immediate chance of a brand boost also could come from Colorado, which rejoins the Big 12 next year from the Pac 12. Under first-year coach Deion Sanders, Colorado won its first three games, vaulted into the AP Top 25, and attracted ESPN and Fox pregame broadcast teams to campus before cooling off with losses to No. 8 Oregon and No. 9 Southern California. Over its first four games, Colorado had the highest college football TV viewership twice and was second twice across all networks, according to Sports Media Watch.
The Buffaloes have ties with four current Big 12 teams who were members of the old Big Eight that dissolved in 1996 — Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, and Oklahoma State. But Colorado hasn’t played any of those teams since 2016. Having Colorado back in the league “might not create a rivalry, but it might create enough interest that can help drive viewership to the conference games,” Dalakas said. “And I do think they add a lot of value and excitement. There is something here to be gained even if it doesn’t involve a rivalry.”
Source: AP News, Jim Vertuno, The Associated Press
