Realignment Madness: When the dust settles, which college basketball league will be the most powerful?

ESPN college basketball analyst Fran Fraschilla was tweeting (or Xing) in the present tense when he issued the following declaration after the most recent round of conference shifting led to Arizona, Arizona State and Utah joining Colorado as recent entrants to the Big 12 Conference.

“The incoming members to @Big12Conference are joining the best basketball conference, obviously.”

The incoming members to @Big12Conference are joining the best basketball conference in the country, obviously. They’ll find that, while the competition is ferocious, respect level for each other has never been stronger. The pride for the league’s success is at all-time high.…

— Fran Fraschilla (@franfraschilla) August 7, 2023

As we presently remain a few months shy of tipoff for the 2023-24 season, our best means of examining that assessment are the results gathered last winter, when the Big 12 posted a 41-23 record against other power conference schools, placed 70 percent of their members into the NCAA Tournament – one of the highest figures ever – and advanced two teams to the Elite Eight, there isn’t really grounds to dispute the Big 12 is the best basketball conference.

But what will be the best when everyone who is on the move lands in their new conference home?

“There’s no argument from me there are various ways to measure the strengths of these leagues,” Fraschilla told the Sporting News.

So, yes, if we are measuring in the decades of the 2020s to date, it’s hard to argue against the Big 12, which won consecutive championships in 2021 and 2022 and then placed all but three of its 10 members in the third season’s NCAA field – not to mention the league was on track to have two No. 1 seeds in 2020, the tournament that was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s not what we’re looking at, though.

We’re looking into the future, when the Big 12 will lose Texas and Oklahoma and gain BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF along with what are known as the “Four Corners” school from the Pac-12.

We’re looking at when the Longhorns and Sooners join the stable base of the Southeastern Conference.

We’re looking at when the Big Ten adds four schools from the West Coast, from Washington and Oregon in the Pacific Northwest to UCLA and USC from Los Angeles.

And we’re looking at an unchanged Atlantic Coast Conference.

MORE: What could be next in ACC, Big Ten, SEC in conference realignment

And then it mostly depends on what you value. Historic success? Recent success? Strength at the top, reflected in championships and Final Four appearances? Or top-to-bottom competition, gauged primarily by how many teams are reaching the NCAA Tournament field?

So Sporting News broke down the four big football-centric conferences, and the Big East, by their success over the whole of their histories in the NCAA Tournament era (starting in 1938-39) and by what they’ve achieved since the turn of the century (the 1999-2000 season).

And what we’ve found is an extension of what Fraschilla said: There are various ways to measure the strength of the leagues, and various ways to measure the measurements. These totals are strictly starting from the 2024-25 membership of conferences. In other words, all of UCLA's accomplishments now go to the Big Ten, all of Texas' go to the SEC, etc.

All-time

Since 2000

There’s no way to draw a definitive answer from any of that – unless you choose to favor a particular category. About the only thing that seems clear is that the SEC does not hold up well in either time frame, but the recent advances made by Alabama, Arkansas and the arrival of Texas and Oklahoma could materially alter those histories.

One can harangue the Big Ten for producing only a single NCAA champion in this century, plus the one Maryland brought along, but it has historically more than any other league (thanks to Pac-12 newbies UCLA and Oregon more than doubling its total), as well as more recent Final Four squads. And there's the fact that 16 league members have made at least one Final Four appearance. That's 89 percent of the membership, a clear separation from other leagues.

The ACC’s nine NCAA championships in this century are a massive statement, and the 21 Final Fours impressive, as well. But so much of the work is done by two schools; North Carolina and Duke each won three titles, and they own a dozen of the Final Four trips.

“The new normal in college basketball, in all of these power conferences, is going to be parity,” Fraschilla told TSN. “I think calibrating down a notch is probably wise because of the size of the leagues, the changing nature of college basketball – given the transfer portal – and the reality that the only way to keep up with the Joneses is to find as many experienced players as possible.”

Fraschilla believes the changes to all these leagues will make significant changes in their chemistry, and it’s not just about the additional travel in leagues that spread from Tucson to Orlando, from Seattle to College Park, Md., from Norman, Okla., to Columbia, S.C.

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This will be particularly true in the Big 12, specifically because it grows from a 10-member league – which it became when West Virginia and TCU joined as Colorado, Nebraska, Texas A&M and Missouri were departing.

“I think Kansas has made everybody better, and if you talk to Bill Self, the league has made Kansas better because there’s such an emphasis on basketball now,” Fraschilla said. “Until this recent last 12 months, six of the 10 coaches had been to a Final Four. Not a lot of leagues can say that.

“Again, 10 teams is different. With 16 teams spread out, it’s more likely there’ll be some mediocrity at the bottom.

“It’s going to change. The double round-robin of the Big 12 and the Big East, in the last decade, I think helped in the strength of each league. The fact that you had opportunities to play the best teams in the league home-and-home. The idea that you were always going to crown a true regular-second champion, unlike leagues with unbalanced schedules. Even though I see the league adding some historically strong basketball programs, my own concern with basketball in the Big 12 going forward, we’re going to miss the incredible tradition of round-robin basketball that we enjoyed for many decades and started to lose in the era of realignment.”

Like so many who closely follow the game, though, he is looking forward to regular matchups between Kansas and Arizona at Allen Fieldhouse and the McKale Center, between Michigan State and UCLA at Pauley Pavilion and the Breslin Center, between Kentucky and Texas at Rupp Arena and the new Moody Center in Austin.

“There’s going to be things we enjoyed from the old days that we can no longer because of realignment and the size of this conference,” Fraschilla said. “But I think, in the Big 12’s case, because of what’s been at stake for the league’s survival over the past 10 years, it’s a small price to pay for the fan. Realignment and expansion has saved the Big 12.”

Which Fraschilla still says is the best basketball league.

It’s easy to argue with him over that.

Which is what makes it fun.