Big 12 reveals updated conference schedule after major reshuffling

The Big 12 has given us its updated conference schedule for 2020.

The Big 12 has rearranged so many of its games on its revised 2020 conference schedule.

On Tuesday night, the Power 5 conference decided to go forward with having its 2020 season. Though the Big Ten and the Pac-12 punted on playing this fall, the Big 12 has for now sided with the ACC and the SEC on continuing to play. They are also joined by three Group of 5 conferences in the AAC, Conference USA and the Sun Belt.

“The virus continues to evolve and medical professionals are learning more with each passing week,” said Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby in a statement that went out late Wednesday morning.

“Opinions vary regarding the best path forward, as we’ve seen throughout higher education and our society overall, but we are comfortable in our institutions’ ability to provide a structured training environment, rigorous testing and surveillance, hospital quality sanitation and mitigation practices that optimize the health and safety of our student-athletes.”

“We believe all of this combines to create an ideal learning and training situation during this time of COVID-19.  Ultimately, our student-athletes have indicated their desire to compete in the sports they love this season and it is up to all of us to deliver a safe, medically sound, and structured academic and athletic environment for accomplishing that outcome.”

What can we now unpack from the Big 12’s revised 2020 conference schedule?

With the major caveat of being subject to change, the Big 12 season will begin on Sept. 26 with all 10 member institutions playing that Saturday. The Big 12 had adopted the nine-plus-one model earlier, allowing one non-conference game to be played outside of their typical round-robin style of nine conference games. These non-conference games will have to be played before Sept. 26.

For now, the first week of conference play will give us the following games: The Kansas Jayhawks at the Baylor Bears, the Iowa State Cyclones at the TCU Horned Frogs, the Kansas State Wildcats at the Oklahoma Sooners, the West Virginia Mountaineers at the Oklahoma State Cowboys and the Texas Longhorns at the Texas Tech Red Raiders.

In terms of marquee matchups, the Red River Rivalry will be on Oct. 10 and the Bedlam Series will be on Nov. 21. Dec. 5 will be the final week of the regular season with the Big 12 Championship game being held a week later on Dec. 12. All 10 teams have two scheduled byes with both of them according between Oct. 10 and Nov. 21.

These teams playing in the first two weeks of the season have the same bye weeks. For example, Baylor and Kansas play on Sept. 26, but both have byes schedule on Oct. 10. Iowa State plays Oklahoma on Oct. 3 and have the same bye on Nov. 14. This allows the Big 12 an opportunity to push back its season as far as Oct. 10 if need be to combat the coronavirus.

The Big 12’s revised schedule allows even more flexibility as it cautiously approaches the season.

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