MORGANTOWN — Bob Bowlsby, the new Big 12 commissioner, was on his first official day on the job Sunday and he left no doubt about one thing.

He understands his sports, and because of that he can’t wait to see the renewed competition in his conference this year as West Virginia and TCU take their place alongside the eight holdover teams that include such football powers as Oklahoma, Texas, Oklahoma State and Kansas State.

“The best of all circumstances is to bring in new members who are highly competitive,” Bowlsby said. “I think West Virginia and TCU will be highly competitive in football. So, right out of the chute, they both will clearly go onto the field and compete with the teams in the Big 12.”

This, of course, does not surprise anyone. Both teams have been regular members of the Top 20 in football and the Mountaineers are undergoing a renaissance of their own with Dana Holgorsen coming in and bringing in his Mountain Air offense.

Holgorsen has a history with Big 12 schools that will make things interesting from years as an assistant in the Big 12 with Texas Tech and Oklahoma State that will serve as a sidebar to games with those schools.

But the fact that new kids on the block come in carrying big-time credentials and something to prove will only serve to make the Big 12 into a conference that intrigues the nation.

“That’s what makes great conferences, great competition from week to week,” Bowlsby said. “It isn’t a good thing when there is a big separation between the top of the league and the bottom of the league and when the same teams dominate at the top of the league each year.

“I think that is what’s so great about these two institutions. They have a chance to come in and compete right away. Is it going to be a bit tougher in the Big 12 than it was in the Big East and the Mountain West? I certainly expect it will be.”

And what might make it even tougher right from the start is that schools don’t like people coming in and beating them up in their own neighborhood.

“It would be my guess that the eight member institutions will work very hard to see that it is a lot tougher,” Bowlsby promised.

This will be especially true when it comes to the Oklahoma Sooners, a proud team that is used to playing for national championships yet wound up being embarrassed by West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl four years ago after the Mountaineers blew their chance to play for the national championship by losing to a four-touchdown underdog Pitt team.

That Fiesta Bowl upset, coming after Rich Rodriguez quit and went to Michigan in the wake of that Pitt loss, of course, is one of the biggest moments in Mountaineer history, the game that landed Bill Stewart the head coaching job.

Certainly, these first couple of years in the Big 12 will prove to be interesting as WVU adjusts to the style and level of play after spending time in a weak Big East.

“It will be a challenge,” WVU athletic director Oliver Luck admitted. “I compare it to the old Atlantic 10 in basketball when I was a student here and then us going to the Big East and people thinking we were going to get clobbered. Well, guess what, Coach Beilein and Coach Huggins competed and won the Big East Tournament and went to the Final Four.”

That the Mountaineers could succeed in the Big East was not really a precursor of success in the Big 12 in football.

In the Big East you did not face quality competition every week and really never faced teams of great national prominence as the Mountaineers will in the Big 12.

The thing that most people don’t understand is that even in men’s basketball the competition will be difficult, and if you think going into Villanova or UConn was tough, wait until you experience West Virginia playing in Phog Allen Field House on the Kansas campus.

Bowlsby expects WVU to be able to handle that challenge, too.

“In West Virginia’s case there’s a very broad-based program that has had a lot of success over a long period of time. Hardly anyone around is more successful in the three flagship sports than West Virginia has been,” Bowlsby said.

Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com. Follow on Twitter @bhertzel.