The dust has now settled.
The Big 12 Conference previously released their football scheduling matrix for four seasons after the four new additions Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah joined the league. The Mountaineers have already played the first season of that slate, but the program still has the next three years booked on the schedule.
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?
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 three seasons depending on the team. The Mountaineers will have five conference home games in 2026 after previously hosting five this past season.
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 had six teams that they will play three times over those four years in the matrix. 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. And so far the program has already played each of those once in 2024.
Out of the four new teams, West Virginia will play host to both Colorado and Utah this coming season after traveling to Arizona last season. However, the upcoming 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 the last time in 2023 and the reverse will be true for TCU over those same two 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 three years, West Virginia will have one seven game home slates and two six game home slates.
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 games 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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