Kansas State Wildcats must alter future football schedules as new members join Big 12
The latest round of conference realignment has created unexpected work for schedule-makers across the Big 12.
Kansas State is one of the football teams that must find a few replacement opponents for its future nonconference schedules.
The Wildcats were supposed to play a home-and-home series with Arizona in 2024 and 2025, followed by a pair of games against Colorado in 2027 and 2028. Those games helped lock in their nonconference schedules for the next four seasons when they were coming against Pac-12 teams. But now that the Buffaloes and Wildcats are set to join the Big 12 in 2024, along with Arizona State and Utah, plans must change.
“We will work on that down the road,” K-State athletic director Gene Taylor said.
It is difficult to predict who the Wildcats will target as they search to fill four holes on their future schedules. There is a chance that K-State could keep Arizona and Colorado on the slate and play them as nonconference opponents, but it sounds like that is not in the cards.
Taylor said his preference will be to replace Arizona and Colorado with other teams from a power conference, as the Big 12 scheduling policy requires each team to play at least one team from another power league each season. But there are no guarantees the Wildcats will be able to find new P5 opponents on short notice, as many teams schedule their games years (if not a full decade) in advance.
K-State has nonconference football games on the books for as far away as 2031 at Rutgers. That game was announced in 2016.
“We will try to get another nonconference P5 if we can,” Taylor said, “but my guess is there will be a lot of schedules in flux. If we can’t find a non-con P5 we would have to get an exception to our league policy. But my guess is they will work with us.”
Several other Big 12 teams will be on the lookout for new opponents.
Arizona will have to say goodbye to future nonconference games against K-State, BYU and Texas Tech. Colorado must work to replace games against Houston, K-State and Oklahoma State. Utah will need to find new opponents to replace BYU, Baylor and Houston.
They all looked like entertaining games when they were scheduled. Now they are conference matchups, and certain schedules must change accordingly.
