It’s a new world for the Big 12 Conference. Oklahoma and Texas left the Big 12 for the SEC this week. It was three years in the making and it’s now official. Meantime, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah are set to join the Big 12 in August.

It’s a critical year in college football as the powers try to create a Power 2, rather than a Power 4, with the Big 12 and ACC excluded from the SEC and the Big Ten. So for the Big 12, it will be imperative to get some impressive wins in 2024 to put to bed the narrative that the Big 12 can’t compete with the top two conferences in college football.

There are going to be opportunities for the Big 12, such as Oklahoma State vs. Arkansas and UCF vs. Florida, plus Iowa State vs. Iowa and Colorado vs. Nebraska. But the biggest game for the Big 12 will come in Week 1, when the West Virginia Mountaineers host the Penn State Nittany Lions.

Why Penn State

The Nittany Lions enter the 2024 season as the team best positioned to challenge the top trio in the Big Ten of Ohio State, Michigan and Oregon. Big 12 fans will recall that James Franklin hired Kansas offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki to boost a passing game that ranked 80th in the FBS with 215 yards per game.

The two teams met last year when West Virginia lost 38-15 to Penn State, but that final score does not do the game justice. WVU trailed by a touchdown at halftime, and had it a two-score game entering the fourth quarter before things began to unravel for the Mountaineers.

Penn State finished the regular season 10-2 with their only losses coming against Michigan and Ohio State.

For the Mountaineers

So now these two teams meet for a second-straight season, this time in Morgantown for Week 1. West Virginia is a projected middle-of-the-pack team in the Big 12 preseason poll, despite a nine-win campaign in 2024. So they likely won’t be in the preseason Top 25, while Penn State will likely find itself in the Top 15, if not higher.

For a Big 12 that is being perceived as competitive, but weak at the top, a West Virginia win over a highly-ranked Penn State program immediately gives credibility to the new Big 12 and helps change the conversation from where the national media narrative wants it to be.

National media talking heads want to promote a “Power 2”, because that’s what their overlords at ESPN, FOX, etc. prefer. They want that narrative as the consolidation is good for their college football business.

The Big 12’s Non-Con

At the start of every season I discuss how Big 12 fans should root for every Big 12 team in non-conference play. It’s good for the league to win as many games as possible before conference play, and then when your team plays its conference games, every win is more valuable, if the perception of the league is high. Just ask the SEC about this. That conference has mastered that perception, whether fair or not, and that’s how they get away with eight league games and multiple FCS games, with no questions asked!

So for Big 12 fans, this is the most critical non-conference slate in Big 12 history. It will set the tone for the future of college football.

Will it truly become a Power 2? Or can the Big 12 win the right games to justify conversations around a Power 3 or Power 4 with the ACC?

Regardless, it all begins Week 1 in Morgantown, West Virginia with a 12:00 p.m. EST start on FOX.