Big 12 releases football scheduling matrix for 2024-27

There are still at least four games left in the 2023 season for Arizona, its final in the Pac-12 Conference, but it already knows who it will be playing next year when it joins the Big 12. The next four years, actually.

The Big 12 announced its scheduling matrix for the 2024 through 2027 seasons on Wednesday, a four-year period in which the Wildcats will play every other member of the 16-team league home and away at least once.

The UA will play nine conference games each season, just as it has in the Pac-12 since 2004, with five at home and four on the road in 2024. The Wildcats will host ASU, Colorado, Texas Tech, Utah and West Virginia while visiting BYU, TCU, UCF and Utah.

It will be the first time the Wildcats have played UCF or West Virginia in football.

The 2025 schedule has Arizona hosting Baylor, BYU, Kansas and Oklahoma State while traveling to ASU, Cincinnati, Colorado, Houston and Iowa State. The trip to Cincinnati will be the first meeting with the Bearcats.

Arizona’s first conference matchup with Kansas State doesn’t come until 2026, in Manhattan, though the two Wildcats are scheduled to meet the next two years in a nonconference game. The UA is scheduled to visit K-State next September to start a home-and-home series that was agreed upon in 2016, with Arizona hosting the return game in 2025.

ASU is the only Big 12 team Arizona will play every season from 2024-27, while it will have three games apiece against BYU, Colorado, Houston and Utah. The Wildcats will play twice at BYU and Utah while hosting Colorado and Houston twice.

Per Brett McMurphy of Action Network, the Territorial Cup is one of only four rivalry games that will be played every season during the next four years. The others are BYU-Utah, Baylor-TCU and Kansas-Kansas State.