With the departures of Colorado and Nebraska from the Big 12 conference, league athletic directors have approved a nine-game, round-robin conference schedule for 2011.
The new conference schedule will feature five home games and four away games in alternating years. Teams with neutral site games (such as Texas and Oklahoma) will go 4-4-1 (home, away, neutral).
“In the approved matrix, each school will play at least two home games per year in Texas; the Texas schools make only two trips per year to the northernmost schools; and we were able to address home/away opponent balance,” said Big 12 senior associate commissioner Tim Allen. “We got down to as few as six repeat sites conflicts before addressing the input of all 10 schools and ended up with, I think, 11 conflicts before we settled into the desired home/away annual rotation.”
Allen was also working on a potential 11-team conference schedule in the event that Colorado was unable to leave the Big 12 until 2012. No team will play more than two consecutive road games and traditional rivalry games such as the Red River Rivalry will stay at their current date.
Future schedules will be released today. Noticeably absent, of course, will be the Big 12 title game.
To read the full interview with Allen on the Big 12’s website, just click here.