Colorado reportedly leaving Pac-12, returning to Big 12

Colorado is expected to return to the Big 12, per Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated. Currently a member of the Pac-12, Colorado has long been rumored to jump ship back to its previous home after bolting prior to the 2011-12 academic year. 

In Forde's report, the veteran college sports scribe said that the school's Board of Regents had a meeting on Wednesday and plan to have another one on Thursday. The conference itself also had a meeting on Wednesday. It's believed that on Thursday, the board will make a formal request to rejoin the Big 12, and that the conference would begin a push "for at least one more member to bring aboard."

The source of the news told Forde that the Big 12 has some natural rivals in mind:

“If Colorado brings the four corners (fellow Pac-12 members Utah, Arizona and Arizona State), that’s the ideal scenario,” one source told SI. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Our schools love the four corners, going from 12 to 16. Can Colorado bring in Arizona or Utah? Arizona more likely than Utah.”

Another school that came up was Connecticut — less for football, which has been less than stellar for years, and more for its men's and women's basketball programs, especially after the men's team won the 2023 national title in April.

In the latest conference realignment plans, the Big 12 added four schools earlier this month to compensate for the impending departures of Oklahoma and Texas for the SEC next summer. Houston, Cincinnati and Central Florida jumped ship from the American Athletic Conference (AAC), while BYU has a history of bouncing between various groups, with its last stop with the West Coast Conference.

The Pac-12, meanwhile, has been in relative shambles since learning that USC and UCLA will leave for the Big Ten next summer. It has yet to sign a new broadcasting rights agreement, one that could keep remaining members from seeking greener pastures while also poaching new schools. (Either San Diego State is salivating at taking Colorado's soon-to-be old seat or is furious it had to kiss and make up with the Mountain West for now.)

Colorado has many of the athletic benefits of large public universities, but most of its 27 national championships have come in skiing and cross-country. Despite talented athletes in basketball and football, the program only has a lone national title in those sports, a controversial split national championship in 1990 where it won the AP vote as the top-ranked team in the country. (Georgia Tech was the other champion.) However, the arrival of Deion Sanders as its head coach has brought a level of hype (and criticism) unseen since those days and perhaps even bigger, if not yet earned on the field just yet.

The Buffaloes were part of the Big 12 from 1996 until 2010, and were longtime members of the predecessor conference, the Big Eight since 1947.