‘I’m Not Going to Morgantown’: ASU AD Anderson Says to Media

Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson and president Michael Crow met with the media during a Saturday morning football practice. Anderson told the media that he will not be coming to Morgantown when discussing the new travel in the Big 12.

“You’re going to try in Olympic sports go to divisions and probably do that in football as well,” said Anderson. “I promise I will not be going to Morgantown. I’m going to sign that to Jean Boyd [Deputy AD], he can go to Morgantown. But send me to Texas and the rivalry with Arizona and the new ones with BYU, Colorado, Utah.”

Though Anderson was quoted in a joking matter, it’s obvious that the ASU officials really favor the schools within their region.

“So look where we are. We have two schools in Utah, two schools in Arizona, we have Colorado and have those schools in Texas. I don’t know how it’s going to end up but that’s a nice little group of schools,” Crow added.

The distance between Morgantown and Tempe is 2,069 miles and would take 29 hours to drive to. There’s no question that proximity is not being considered during this conference realignment stage. The Olympic sports suffer the most as they could be playing games across the country on a night before classes.

Arizona State joined Arizona and Utah as the 14th, 15th and 16th Big 12 teams for the 2024 season.

Friday was a chaotic day for college athletics. It all started late Thursday night during the Arizona Board of Regents meeting where Arizona and Arizona State discussed departing the Pac-12. Big 12 executives accepted Arizona to join the conference. When this was all happening, Arizona State and Utah were hesitant, waiting on see what Oregon and Washington would do.

The Big 12 Conference starting in the 2024-25 season will consist of Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati, Colorado, Iowa State, Houston, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech, Utah and West Virginia.