With universities like the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma officially moving to new athletic conferences on July 1, it prompted The Athletic to analyze which college football programs stand to benefit most from the latest conference realignment.
Stewart Mandel of The Athletic gave schools from 67 powerhouse conferences a score between -5 and +5 based on how much recent changes have affected each football team's ability to win.
“A score of 0 means a school is neither good nor bad; scores of 1 to 5 range from slightly better to very good, and scores of -1 to -5 range from slightly bad to… well, terrible,” Mandel wrote.
Along with giving his scores, Mandel also offered some comments about every program on the list.
For example, he said it's unreasonable to expect the Sooners to perform as well on the field in the SEC as they did in the Big 12 to justify giving Oklahoma a -3.
“From 1938-2021, the Sooners won Big 8/Big 12 championships in 47 of 83 seasons. No major program in the country has won more league titles. Realistically, OU will never enjoy that level of dominance in the SEC,” Mandel wrote.
Here's what The Athletic had to say about BYU, which is in its second year in the Big 12, and Utah, which will officially join BYU in the Big 12 in August.
BYU in the Big 12
The BYU football team may not have performed well in the Big 12 preseason media poll this week — the Cougars finished 13th, as previously reported by the Deseret News — but they did perform well in The Athletic's list.
Mandel gave the team a +5 and claimed the sky is the limit now for BYU football.
“The Cougars have finally made it to the top after spending their entire career in non-powerhouse and independent conferences. They now qualify directly for the (College Football Playoff) and will not finish 16th with one loss like they did in 2020,” he wrote.
BYU was one of two schools to receive a +5 rating in The Athletic's analysis, the other being SMU.
Big 12 Utah
The University of Utah football team is in the opposite situation to BYU. The team was picked to be No. 1 in the preseason polls, but Mandel believes Utah will perform worse in the long run after moving to the Big 12 league.
“Utah enters the new league stronger than any other team, but the Pac-12 has seen the Utes do well, not only winning four league titles in five years but also boasting Power 5 status over rival BYU. No more,” Mandel wrote.
He gave Utah football a -1 grade, and the worst grade in the Big 12 Conference was Arizona State's -3 grade.
Big 12 Conference Schools
As of Aug. 1, the Big 12 will include 16 schools, including BYU and Utah.
The complete list of Big 12 schools is below:
Arizona
Arizona
Baylor
BYU
Cincinnati
Colorado
Houston
Iowa State University
Kansas
Kansas
Oklahoma
TCU
Texas Tech University
University of California, San Francisco
Utah
West Virginia
