Brown, WVU expresses trust, confidence in Big 12

Neal Brown doesn’t have a lot of thoughts on conference realignment.

But the wheels of realignment never stop turning and the Big 12 added four new teams yet again at the start of the 2024 season from the Pac-12 in Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State to bring the league to 16 members.

Colorado will be returning to the Big 12 after leaving after the 2010 season, while the other three will be first time members in the league.

Therefore, when it comes to any of the additions there isn’t a lot of emotion either way and in fact Brown even remembers when Colorado was in the league the first time.

“Not really,” Brown said. “I’m old enough to know when they were in the conference.”

Brown was the offensive coordinator at Texas Tech when the Red Raiders squared off against the Buffaloes in the 2010 football season, a 27-24 win in Boulder. Colorado would depart for the Pac-12 the following season where they would remain until announcing their departure back to their ancestral home in late July.

The other three would follow the Buffaloes a week later to complete the 16-team composition of the league that spans 10 different states and features a number of major media markets in the process.

The four new teams will join as full members initially and be paid $31.7 million as part of the media rights deal as both Texas and Oklahoma will transition into the SEC. There is no penalty for any of those teams for leaving their former league because there was no media rights deal in place for the Pac-12.

It's a shift for the league that previously had been on its heels after the departures of two of the pillars of the conference in Texas and Oklahoma.

However, now the Big 12 is in a different position after previously adding BYU, Cincinnati, Central Florida and Houston to find stability and then inking a six-year media rights deal extension with ESPN and FOX to provide linear options for the games to be shown.

"For the last several months we’ve been in a position of power which has not always been the case," Brown said.

Athletic Director Wren Baker echoed those sentiments.

"If you look where we’re at today, clearly in the top three of most stable, best-positioned conferences moving forward in college athletics it’s a remarkable job. It’s a remarkable job of the leadership in the Big 12 when all of that happened," Baker said.

Baker was on the outside looking in until the news came that the four schools were done. Adding all four gives the Big 12 more time zones and stability, especially in an era with shrinking resources in the television industry.

"You look at the markets we picked up and not just the markets but the penetration in those markets, I think we’re positioned very well for the future," Baker said.

For Brown, he's taking the same approach that he took at Big 12 media days when he said with no disrespect intended that he didn’t care that Texas and Oklahoma were exiting the league. Because while losing those brands obviously is less than ideal, it doesn’t affect the day-to-day within his West Virginia football program.

He reiterated that point yet again when asked about the new schools.

But all kidding aside, Brown did call the programs “great additions,” and overall expressed trust in commissioner Brett Yormark when it comes to looking out for the best interest of the league.

“West Virginia is going to be positioned well and the Big 12 will be positioned well,” he said.

Yormark has continued to be aggressive, which has paid off with the league now sitting in a position of not only stability but with a widespread reach as well.

“I think it’s genius to try to get in four time zones because it’s all about television,” Brown said. “If you can play in all four time slots on Saturday and Thursday and Friday it’s pretty good business to me.”

In the realm of conference realignment, you eat or get eaten, and the Big 12 is happy to be well-fed.

"From a West Virginia standpoint, we're in the group that's at least eating," Brown said.

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