Beyond athletics, what will moving to the Big 12 mean for ASU and UA?

When Arizona State University and the University of Arizona announced in early August they would change athletic conferences, headlines abounded about what it meant for the Pac-12 and the history both schools would leave behind.

But the shift to the Big 12 is about more than athletics, higher education branding and recruitment experts say, and the move means that both universities will likely spend the next several years revamping their marketing strategies. The Pac-12 has been West Coast-centric. The Big 12 schools are concentrated in the middle of the country but also include some in the Eastern time zone, giving the conference a broader geographic footprint.

That gives both schools the opportunity to expand into new markets in fast-growing states, experts say. It also brings them into a grouping of institutions that includes private universities and some smaller schools — a striking contrast to the Pac-12, which was almost entirely large, public research universities.

The move could introduce ASU and UA to a broader audience and help both weather the coming enrollment cliff, a dramatic drop in the college-age population forecasted to begin in coming years.

Jason Cook, vice president for marketing and communications at Baylor University, which is a Big 12 member, said the change represents "a tremendous opportunity" for the Arizona universities.

"Often, in higher education and in college athletics, other schools, other institutions, other fanbases, really perpetuate a brand story that may or may not be accurate," he said. "But in the conference realignment, you're changing your competitor sets, and it allows you to tell your brand story and market your institution on your own terms."

But if handled badly, the conference change could impact both schools' reputations negatively. It could also erode their connections to alumni and potential students in California and other West Coast states that have been crucial to growing their out-of-state student population.

"If we look at previous conference expansions, especially the ones that we've seen in the last five years or last decade, really, it either works really well for the individual institutions or it really doesn't," said Dana Cruikshank, a vice president at VisionPoint, a marketing firm that works exclusively with colleges and universities.

UA leaders would not discuss with The Arizona Republic how the athletic conference change will affect their overall marketing and recruitment efforts, and ASU President Michael Crow could not be reached for comment by deadline.

Still, experts said they'd be surprised if both schools weren't already having internal conversations about how to make the most of the conference change.

"No part of this process, if it's successful, will succeed because of osmosis or by chance," Cruikshank said. "It'll be because they've really sat down in a strategic way to say, 'OK, here's the opportunities, here are the strengths, here's what we're trying to achieve. Let's get that vision, let's get that messaging, let's get that alignment and get it out there.'"

Will the change boost Arizona universities?

Arizona universities have become increasingly reliant on out-of-state students, who pay more in tuition than residents, as higher education funding from the state Legislature has been whittled away in recent decades.

A little under half of ASU's spring 2023 graduating class were Arizona residents, and enrollment numbers from UA last year show that around half of their students are nonresidents.

But recruiting students is expected to get harder for colleges and universities in coming years as the U.S. approaches a demographic cliff. The college-age population is expected to dramatically drop before 2030 in all but a handful of states.

California, where ASU and UA have traditionally had strong recruitment programs and alumni pools, is one state that is expected to avoid some of the impacts of approaching demographic changes.

Cook, who previously oversaw Texas A&M University's transition into the SEC conference as the school's senior associate athletics director, said the biggest benefit he sees to the conference change for Arizona's universities is that it also unlocks Texas, another state with a more stable population of potential college students, as a new market.

There are five Texas schools in the Big 12 — although one, the University of Texas at Austin, will depart the conference next year for the SEC. As ASU and UA begin playing those schools' teams more regularly, the Arizona schools' visibility in the Lone Star state will grow.

"You have to look at this more as a long-term play for the future health and viability of the university," Cook said. "How are we best positioning the institution for the future in terms of long-term success in athletics, but also new pipelines for prospective students, opportunities or more geographic recognition across the country?"

The key will be to expand marketing reach while also keeping ties to California strong, said Terry Flannery, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, a nonprofit association of educational institutions that includes both ASU and UA as members.

Flannery, who previously worked in marketing and communications at Stony Brook University, American University and the University of Maryland, said it takes more resources and more time to establish brand awareness in new markets than to sustain it in existing ones.

"If they've already got very well-established brands in those (existing) markets, then they should be able to withstand the immediate impact of the change," she said. "It's more likely that they need to be thinking about how to sustain their brand awareness in those (existing) markets through other channels and other means."

Once a university has graduates and others affiliated with the institution in a specific market, she said, it can begin to advance its presence in that place through initiatives like workforce partnerships and alumni engagement.

What does the move mean for academic reputations?

The Pac-12 and Big 12 have the same initial eligibility requirements for student-athletes and last year both conferences saw similar average academic progress rates, an NCAA-wide measuring stick of student-athletes' scholarly achievements and advancement toward graduation.

While student-athletes' classroom performance in the Pac-12 and the Big 12 aren't drastically different, experts say the conferences have somewhat different reach.

"The Pac-12, in the past, has been seen as more of a regional conference," Cook said. "Now, with the Big 12, you've got to be seen as part of a national conference."

The Big 12 hasn't always been seen as it is now, Cook said. In the 2000s and early 2010s, the Big 12 was largely confined to the central United States. But since then, it's expanded, and Cook now sees opportunities for ASU and UA to use that larger footprint to introduce themselves to a bigger audience.

The conferences also differ with respect to the types of schools in them. The Pac-12 is entirely made up of large research universities. The Big 12, Cook said, is more diverse.

"You have land-grant schools," he said. "You have schools with significant health care missions related to them. You have schools like Baylor that have a religious background as a private institution. So I think across the league there is an appreciation of the diversity of the types of institutions that you have in terms of their academic focus areas, their geography being different."

But in addition to opportunities, Cruikshank said, the Big 12's diversity comes with potential reputational hazards.

"There are fantastic, strong public research institutions in the Big 12, for sure," he said. "However, it's also a little bit more of a bigger institution. You have a few more — and I'm not going to name which ones — but some definitely have more of a party school rep than what you would have in other areas."

How the conference move will impact Arizona universities' reputations and that of the Big 12 remains unclear, he said.

"I think their reputations will change over time with this conference shift and the Big 12 will change as well," Cruikshank said. "They'll change each other."

New competitors for students?

The extent to which ASU and UA will compete with other schools in the Big 12 when it comes to recruiting students depends on the institution, experts said.

ASU Athletics spokesperson Doug Tammaro said that student-athlete recruitment for ASU is generally a "sport-by-sport" matter, making it "tough" to say whether he expects more Sun Devils to hail from the Big 12 geographic regions in coming years.

Tony Dobies, senior director of marketing at West Virginia University, said he doesn't see Arizona as fertile ground for recruiting students to his school, although he expects a boost to general brand awareness and alumni engagement for West Virginians now living in the Copper State.

"Prospective students have so many options to choose from, and our more traditional competitors in that realm are closer to home," Dobies said. "Proximity is one of the most consistent key factors in narrowing down schools for a student, and most of our students come from within West Virginia and from our surrounding states in the eastern U.S."

Baylor University already recruits heavily from Arizona, Cook said, and it's the school's seventh-largest state in terms of incoming students. He said he doesn't believe that the conference shift will mean his university sees a huge change in the share of students from Arizona. But the new Big 12 members from Arizona could help Baylor in other ways, he said.

"Where we see the benefits coming for us is primarily going to be the on the alumni side," he said. Playing in Arizona "gives an opportunity for us to increase engagement and participation of our alumni in those markets."

Sasha Hupka covers higher education for The Arizona Republic. Do you have a tip on Arizona's universities, community colleges or trade schools? Reach her at sasha.hupka@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @SashaHupka. Follow her on Instagram or Threads: @sashahupkasnaps.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: What does moving to Big 12 from Pac-12 mean for reach of ASU and UA?