Three teams WVU would like to knock out of the Big 12

With the constantly changing landscape of college sports, it can be difficult to keep track of which program is in which conference and who your favorite team will have to play against to win the division title that these days can automatically earn you a spot in the soon-to-be-inaugurated 12-team College Football Playoff.

In the process, many traditional rivalries faded and in some cases even resurfaced. In addition, regionality was sacrificed in favor of lucrative TV markets and coast-to-coast competition. And today, the traditional brands we know and love about college athletics look very different.

West Virginia used to share the Big East with traditional regional rivals such as Pitt, Rutgers and Syracuse, with the champion earning a spot in the BCS Bowl in football – the latter system has since been swept to the dustbin of history. When they joined the Big 12 after the dissolution of their former conference, they found new prominent national opponents on the schedule, such as Oklahoma and Texas, both of which are now preparing to join the SEC in the fall.

With football being the highest-grossing college sport and the future looking bright for more changes, it’s almost certain that conference realignment will take another round or two. Here are three different programs West Virginia would certainly like to see pushed out of the Big 12 as part of future expansion.

Since it was announced that the Utah Utes would join the conference this fall, they have been little more than a nuisance to fans of the existing Big 12 programs.

For example, a fan in a message board compared Utah’s upcoming stay in the Big 12 to their time in the Mountain West Conference – a Group of Five league – before joining the Pac-12. Granted, the fan highlighted the return of former rivalries in the Mountain West like TCU and BYU and also mentioned that the competition is better overall in the Big 12. But they also lament Utah’s loss of big games against bigger brands like USC and Oregon.

Combining this attitude with the fact that Utah’s football program is capable of taking the place of Oklahoma or Texas in the new Big 12 from the start, some media outlets have already vocation Utah is the league’s “new villain.” Some who cover the Big 12, want Utah is eliminated from the league before it has a chance to play its first season.

This is a particularly sore spot for WVU fans. The fan base of new conference opponent Arizona State was much more excited about the move to their new home than Utah’s, but there was one press conference in particular where members of Arizona State’s administration annoyed WVU fans in a unique way.

Although they have a rival from their own state in Arizona, two former Pac-12 opponents from their old conference in Utah and Colorado, and the journey to most Big 12 schools is much shorter than was ever the case for an outsider like West Virginia, Arizona State President Michael Crow and Athletic Director Ray Anderson lamented the travel that awaits them in the new league.

When jokingly asked about the possibility of a satellite office in Morgantown, Anderson makes an offhand remark that will forever sour Mountaineer fans.

“I promise I’m not going to Morgantown,” Anderson said. “I’ll sign this for Jean Boyd. He can go to Morgantown. But send me to Texas and the rivalry with Arizona and start a new one with BYU and Utah and Colorado.”

For WVU fans, who, as mentioned, had to deal with being a geographic underdog for a decade before moving on to hosting teams east of the Mississippi, complaints about the trip seem a little whiny. Moreover, Mountaineer fans find the idea that a conference AD ​​couldn’t be bothered to travel to Morgantown to be blatant disrespect.

This final selection has less to do with the opposing fan base and administration and more to do with WVU’s historical struggles as a program against Oklahoma State.

Since joining the Big 12 in 2012, the Mountaineers have played against the Cowboys 12 times — in these encounters Are 3-9 overall. The only team they have a worse conference record against is now SEC-affiliated Oklahoma, against whom WVU went just 2-10 in conference play. The Mountaineers even had a better record against Texas, another historic Big 12 power, than they did against Oklahoma State.

Even if you look at the history outside the conference before 2012, Is only 5-10 against the Cowboys. And while there isn’t much resentment from WVU toward Oklahoma State as a program, it often seems like the Mountaineers would fare much better on the Big 12 field if they weren’t constantly playing against the Mike Gundy-led Cowboys.