Arizona football lingering question No. 4: How do the Wildcats stack up in the Big 12?

The Star is asking — and answering — five lingering questions surrounding the Arizona football program following the Wildcats’ historic 2023 season. Up next: How does Arizona stack up in the Big 12?

This college football season was the last dance in the Pac-12 for Arizona, along with nine other of its “Conference of Champions” opponents before they splinter into their new respective conferences this summer.

Big 12-bound Arizona exceeded its season expectations with a 10-3 record and capped the season with a win over future SEC member Oklahoma in the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio. The Wildcats will compete in a new conference for the first time since 1978.

Returning most of its starters from the 2023 season, the 14th-ranked Wildcats enter the 16-team Big 12 as one of the premiere football programs, in addition to the UA having highly competitive basketball programs and Olympic sports. Arizona is lockstep with Arizona State, Colorado and Utah as Pac-12 members bolting for the Big 12, which has a media rights deal with ESPN and Fox worth $2.3 billion, with each member school receiving a $31.7 million share annually.

“We feel very good about our future,” said Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark in August. “What our membership composition looks like, when you think about it in terms of where we were and where we are and where we’re going, we will be a conference in 10 different states with access to over 90 million consumers in four different time zones. It presents a lot of opportunities and a lot of possibilities for the conference.”

Arizona football coach Jedd Fisch said the athletic department’s move to the Big 12 “is what was needed at the time” and “there’s a lot of positives behind it.”

“Clearly, we all love being in the Pac-12 and playing the schools on the West Coast, but as those West Coast schools were no longer in the Pac-12, it made things more difficult and challenging for all aspects of the game,” Fisch said. “Now it’s an opportunity to recruit nationally. It’s an opportunity for us to really put a footprint in Texas. I recruited Florida my whole life.

“Of course, I love the idea of bringing our West Coast team east, so we’re going to spend a lot of time focused on Southern California and Arizona, like we always have.”

Fisch said the Big 12, despite losing Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC, is “a great football conference.”

“We’re talking about programs that have been where we all strive to be, which is the College Football Playoff,” Fisch said. “There’s a lot of good football there.”

Speaking of the CFP, it expands to 12 teams next season, after a decade with a four-team format, and Arizona could potentially enter its debut season in the Big 12 as not only as a Top-10 team, but one of the favorites to compete for a conference championship at AT&T Stadium in Dallas, along with contending for a national championship in Atlanta, merely three years after going 1-11.

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An ESPN graphic last week showed that if next year’s conference lineups had been in place this year, and if there was a 12-team playoff, Arizona would have gotten a first-round bye and a No. 4 seed in the playoff, signifying the Wildcats would have won the Big 12. The bracket also had Michigan (Big Ten), Alabama (SEC) and Florida State (ACC) as conference winners that earned byes. At-large bids would have gone to Liberty, Washington, Oregon, Ohio State, Penn State, Texas, Missouri and Georgia.

Riding a seven-game national buzz under Fisch has the Wildcats “going into the Big 12 with a lot of momentum,” said Arizona’s head coach. Starting Wednesday, the Cats will “start working our way through the process of getting ready for the next conference.”

“I love our players, and I think the reason why we can do what we do is because our players stay and our players work hard and our players believe,” Fisch said. “Where else would you rather be than go try to be in the Top 10 or better next year?”

Following Arizona’s nonconference schedule against New Mexico, Northern Arizona and a road trip to Kansas State (which will count as a nonconference game), the Wildcats will have road games at BYU, Utah, TCU and UCF in Orlando. The Wildcats’ home slate includes ASU, Colorado, West Virginia, Houston and Texas Tech.

The only teams on Arizona’s schedule that played in a bowl game in the 2023 season include Kansas State, Texas Tech, West Virginia, Utah and UCF. TCU, UCF and BYU all finished in the bottom half of the Big 12.

Arizona won’t play Oklahoma State, which went 10-4 this season, until the following season in Tucson. If the Wildcats play the Cowboys in 2024, it would have to be for the Big 12 title game in Dallas. Arizona also doesn’t play Baylor, Houston, Kansas, Cincinnati and Iowa State until 2025. Arizona will have at least one game in the state of Texas every season.

Although the Wildcats have a favorable schedule in their first year in a new conference, some of their opponents are also on the rise. Texas Tech, TCU, UCF and West Virginia currently have 2024 recruiting classes rated higher than Arizona’s class in the Big 12, according to 247Sports.com; the Wildcats are sixth.

But if Arizona’s roster of returning stars and impactful starters strike while the iron is hot in 2024, the Wildcats could start their chapter in the Big 12 with a more memorable season than their final one in the Pac-12.

“That conference right now is sitting in a spot where there’s some really, really good football,” Fisch said of the Big 12.

“We’re excited to join that conference and be one of those major contenders.”