The dust has now settled.
The Big 12 Conference has released their football scheduling matrix for the next four seasons with the four new additions Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah set to join the league for the 2024 season.
There was never any chance to everybody would be happy with how the slate turned out in the end, but how does it stack up for West Virginia over the next four seasons?
The Big 12 elected to stick with a nine-game league slate, which means that there will be five home games rotating with four the following year over the next four seasons depending on the team. The Mountaineers will have five conference home games in 2024 and 2026.
There will be no divisions in the conference and the plan was to construct the schedule to allow every team to have at least a home-and-home against every other team in the league over the four-game span. That way teams would be able to play every game in the league, as opposed to some conference set ups where teams can go years without hosting or traveling to play certain opponents.
There are four protected rival games in the matrix, but West Virginia is not featured among those meaning that the Mountaineers will have six teams that they will play three times over those four years. Unsurprisingly two of those will be the other Eastern time zone teams in Cincinnati and UCF.
The remaining four will be Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Kansas and Texas Tech.
Of those six teams, West Virginia will have two home games and one road game with UCF, Iowa State and Kansas while the reverse will be true for Oklahoma State, Cincinnati and Texas Tech.
From a travel and competitive perspective this seems to make the most sense in this approach although some might have wanted to avoid traveling to Texas Tech twice in that four-year span.
Out of the four inbound teams, West Virginia won’t play host to any of them until 2025 when both Colorado and Utah come to Morgantown but will travel to Arizona next season. However, that 2025 season also features the most travel across the country with trips to Arizona State and BYU along with road trips to Houston, UCF and Kansas.
The Mountaineers will host Arizona in 2026 and then Arizona State in 2027. But travel to both Utah in 2026 and Colorado in 2027 rounding out the newcomers on the schedule.
Due to the set up of the schedule, West Virginia will only have one true home-and-home in consecutive years with a newcomer with Utah in 2025 and 2026, but with current teams the Mountaineers will head to Houston in 2025 before finally hosting them in 2026 despite heading there this past season and the reverse will be true for TCU over those same two years.
The release of the schedule also allows us to get a look at what the complete schedule will look like next season without the dates at this stage.
The Mountaineers will have seven home games for the first time since 2016 with Penn State and Albany in the non-conference portion and then Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State and UCF all coming to Morgantown. The road games will be Pittsburgh in non-conference and then Arizona, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State and Cincinnati.
As for the rest of the years, the 2025 schedule will feature home games against Pittsburgh and Robert Morris out of the league along with Big 12 contests against Utah, Colorado, Texas Tech and TCU. The five road games for that season will be Arizona State, BYU, Houston, Kansas and UCF.
In 2026, the Mountaineers have home contests with Alabama, UT Martin along with the Big 12 schedule of Arizona, Houston, Oklahoma State, Kansas and Cincinnati. The road games feature ECU, Utah, Texas Tech, TCU and Iowa State.
Finally, the 2027 slate has VMI and Ohio at home with Arizona State, BYU, Iowa State and UCF and the road contests being Alabama, Colorado, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Cincinnati.
Out of those four years, West Virginia will have two seven game home slates and two six game home slates, although it could be interesting to see if anything is moved around during that time.
Still, while there isn’t any direct rivalry contest with the new model West Virginia will be able to play some of the teams that they have squared off against in the old Big 12 while picking up three of four against both Cincinnati and UCF. Without any clear-cut favorites, this is a league schedule that could lead to parity which could be beneficial for the Mountaineers moving forward.
*Except for the games listed with a date, the games are in no particular order*
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