Fans who enjoy Bedlam football as part of their Thanksgiving weekend will be in a for a treat for many years to come.

Tuesday, the Big 12 Conference released conference schedules for the 2008 through 2015 seasons and Bedlam will serve as the regular-season finale those years.

The Sooners have preferred to have that weekend off. The desire is to allow the players to go home for the holiday and have an extra week to prepare for a possible Big 12 Championship game. That will be the case next season. The 2007 edition of Bedlam is currently scheduled for Oct. 27.

But the current 12-game regular season complicates things. There are only 13 weeks available to play those games in most of those seasons.

Not playing Bedlam Thanksgiving weekend would mean OU would have to play 12 straight weeks during the regular season.

Also, the Bedlam game has been highly sought by Fox Sports Net, which has a television contract with the conference.

“The conference members spent considerable time evaluating a variety of creative strategies related to scheduling and subsequently agreed on the schedule as it appears now,” OU athletic director Joe Castiglione said in a statement. “Keep in mind we’re entering the negotiation phase for our over-the-air television rights and some of the Thanksgiving weekend slots were assigned in anticipation of a new agreement. This was done with a number of divisional rivalries throughout the league.”

The Big 12’s desire to have “rivalry games” to end the regular season also played into the decision. Texas and Texas A&M is also played that weekend along with Nebraska-Colorado and Missouri-Kansas.

The Bedlam game has been played on Thanksgiving weekend six of the last eight years, including the last two years after it had been scheduled for earlier in the season but later moved for television purposes.

The Sooners open conference play against Baylor in 2008, 2009 and 2013. The Red River Shootout kicks things off in 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2015. Kansas State opens league play in 2012.

John Shinn

366-3536

jshinn@normantranscript.com