This is going to sound a little ridiculous, mostly because it is making bets on the direction of college football and would require quite a bit of cooperation from a lot of schools. So, let's dive into it.
Existing Options:
Option 1: The Big12-4 could look to pick up schools from a few conferences to rebuild
Why it doesn't work: The quality of the product that they would have would guarantee a significant drop in TV contracts
Option 2: The remaining schools seek out landing spots with other major conferences
Why it doesn't work: The remaining 8 schools will water down the product of any conference they join. WVU to the ACC would be the only potential caveat with MAYBE kU to the B10, but even then... it's a massive risk to wait, as they would assuredly be forced to do.
New Option:
The B12 should do what everyone is speculating the SEC might be doing with creating a potential national scale "Conference" which is effectively just a league of it's own. Merge all the G5 conferences together into a nationwide college football league.
We know the way the sport is trending and any school not in a P4 conference is going to be left out and without relevance. To combat that the B12 should organize a league of all the other schools and that creates a nationwide product and then can use that combined leverage to garner opportunities to compete in national championship.
While the collection of schools would not generate a ton of TV revenue each, they would be broadcasted across almost every state, they would be able to set their own rules relevant to the scale of their school size, they would have a dominant basketball brand, they could still get a seat at the table (albeit diminished) when the other conferences make their separation official.
It's a risk, you're effectively leaning into the fact that your programs aren't "P4" quality, but in doing so you get ahead of the game and can set the narrative, you can sell a product that even the big conferences can't sell and you end up leveraging a team or two into whatever sort of playoff structure they create.
Existing Options:
Option 1: The Big12-4 could look to pick up schools from a few conferences to rebuild
Why it doesn't work: The quality of the product that they would have would guarantee a significant drop in TV contracts
Option 2: The remaining schools seek out landing spots with other major conferences
Why it doesn't work: The remaining 8 schools will water down the product of any conference they join. WVU to the ACC would be the only potential caveat with MAYBE kU to the B10, but even then... it's a massive risk to wait, as they would assuredly be forced to do.
New Option:
The B12 should do what everyone is speculating the SEC might be doing with creating a potential national scale "Conference" which is effectively just a league of it's own. Merge all the G5 conferences together into a nationwide college football league.
We know the way the sport is trending and any school not in a P4 conference is going to be left out and without relevance. To combat that the B12 should organize a league of all the other schools and that creates a nationwide product and then can use that combined leverage to garner opportunities to compete in national championship.
While the collection of schools would not generate a ton of TV revenue each, they would be broadcasted across almost every state, they would be able to set their own rules relevant to the scale of their school size, they would have a dominant basketball brand, they could still get a seat at the table (albeit diminished) when the other conferences make their separation official.
It's a risk, you're effectively leaning into the fact that your programs aren't "P4" quality, but in doing so you get ahead of the game and can set the narrative, you can sell a product that even the big conferences can't sell and you end up leveraging a team or two into whatever sort of playoff structure they create.
