The college football sports landscape has been everchanging over the last few years and while the Big Ten and SEC have grabbed most of the headlines, the Big 12 has been active in their own right.
While the Big 12’s activity has been more to limit the potential of its demise, the conference has made strong additions to the conference as of late including BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston. Now, they could be looking to add another program to their conference.
According to Russ Steinberg of Boardroom, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark recently visited UConn to meet with the university’s administration. The conversations at this point were considered “very exploratory”.
This is not the first time that UConn and the Big 12 have been brought up together this week. Earlier this week, Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated listed UConn among the schools that the Big 12 was considering when it came to further conference expansion. He also listed Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah, San Diego State, and UNLV among those that the conference was targeting.
Of course, one of those schools, San Diego State is also reportedly favored to join the Pac-12 in the near future according to the same report by Dellenger. You can read more on San Diego State’s future, here.
UConn, of course, is familiar with changing conferences. After being part of the Big East from 1979 through 2012, the Huskies joined the AAC from 2013 through 2019 before joining the Big East once again for all sports except football, once again in 2020.
When it comes to football, the program played one season in 1979 before returning in 2000 and was independent from 2000 through 2003 before playing in the Big East from 2004 through 2012. They would join the American Athletic Conference in 2013 and play in the conference until 2019 before returning to being independent in 2020.
It’s unclear if the Big 12 is looking to add UConn on a football-only basis or if they would join for all sports. Currently, the Big 12 has a small foothold in the Mid-Atlantic / eastern portion of the Midwest with Cincinnati and West Virginia. The conference which historically was made up of schools located in the Midwest has grown its footprint with conference expansion as noted above with hopes of being able to survive the blow of losing Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC starting in 2024.