Texas and Oklahoma will play in the Red River Rivalry on Saturday for the final time as members of the Big 12. The rivalry game will continue, but the universities will move on to the SEC before the 2024 season.
The shift is part of widespread realignment in college football, in which geography plays less of a role in which teams play in which league.
"They've killed the nostalgic beauty of the sport," said RJ Choppy of Shan and RJ on Audacy's 105.3 The Fan. "College football has been about tailgates, tradition, rivalries, uniqueness. The tailgates are still there. The tradition is still there. The rivalries are not. And the uniqueness is not."
On the other side of the coin, Longhorns' play-by-play voice Craig Way said realignment has opened opportunities for smaller schools to find new homes.
"Texas and Oklahoma leaving the Big 12, yes, it's big and it's seismic, but other programs are stepping up their games as well to make college football and by extension, college athletics continue to grow," he said. "You have more programs that were smaller colleges that are now stepping up to that Division I status."
While the Big 12 will add Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah ahead of next season, Dennis Coates, an economic professor at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, explained the loss of the conference's most high-profile teams will impact college towns in the league.
"I don't think that replacing a game against Texas with a game against Arizona or Arizona State is going to have the same kind of cachet that you would have from the traditional rivalries," he said.
Listen to Texas Wants to Know in the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts.