Colorado deputy athletic director Jason DePaepe still carries a leather binder with a Pac-12 logo on the cover, but he admits he needs a new one soon and not just because it’s clear the binder has been well-used over the years.

“Yes, I do need a new one,” he said with a laugh.

DePaepe’s binder is one small example of the facelift Colorado is undergoing as it moves from the Pac-12 to the Big 12 — a move that has been in the works for more than a year and became official on Friday.

After 13 years as a member of the Pac-12, the Buffs are now one of four new members of the Big 12 (along with Arizona, Arizona State and Utah), and with that move comes the process of replacing Pac-12 logos throughout the facilities.

That task has been on DePaepe’s plate and will be ongoing for a few more weeks.

“We started putting this together … it’s been a while,” he said as he displayed a set of dozens of photos where Pac-12 logos appear around the campus. “We made it a point to talk to everybody about, ‘Hey, look, as you’re walking through and you see a logo that you think we might have forgot (let us know).’ We had to start a list somewhere. So this is kind of where we started. We kind of just started looking around at everything.”

The obvious, but also most expensive and most difficult changes, come on the playing surfaces. The Big 12 will send a stencil to CU so it can paint a conference logo on the football field at Folsom Field.

In the spring, the Buffs started replacing Pac-12 with Big 12 logos on the practice gyms at the CU Events Center. The main floor of the events center is scheduled to get a new logo this weekend.

“The biggest challenge that we’ve had with the transition has been the courts because that’s not something you just call a guy and hey, come change out the court,” DePaepe said. “It’s a process and we’ve got to get on the calendar.”

That has required DePaepe and the Buffs to work around graduations, concerts, other events and, simply, time needed by the student-athletes to be on the court or field to practice.

With the basketball courts, DePaepe said the Buffs have recently switched from painted logos to stickers. When the Events Center got a new court just two years ago, stickers were used, which will make the switch to Big 12 logos easier.

“Now we can just peel the sticker off and then we’ll put the new logo down,” he said. “The technology with putting stickers on courts now under the top coat has advanced and there’s groups that can do it really well.”

Replacing logos on the synthetic fields, including Kittredge Field where the women’s lacrosse team plays, is part of the process, as well. New Big 12 logos will be installed on the indoor football practice field this month.

To replace Pac-12 logos in other areas of the facilities, DePaepe has worked with his brother, Brent, who is CU’s creative director. Brent and his creative team put together the list of where logos are located and which ones will be replaced. In some areas, a Pac-12 logo will be replaced with a Big 12 logo. In other areas, the Pac-12 logo might be replaced with CU’s traditional Ralphie logo.

“They have the harder part of the job, formatting everything and then they’ll send the images over to make sure that everything is right,” Jason said of his brother’s creative team. “They have all the images for what’s going to go up and then, basically, they’ll start sending images over to our crew that will create the prints and then they come and replace them.”

Jason did point out, however, “We’re not trying to eradicate every Pac-12 logo,” because CU has 13 years of history in that conference.

For example, there are graphics on the walls of the Events Center of CU men’s basketball winning a Pac-12 tournament title in 2012, which include Pac-12 logos on the jerseys of those players. There’s a graphic of former running back Phillip Lindsay, who only played in the Pac-12 and that logo is on his jersey.

Photos of Lindsay and other athletes might be replaced over time, Jason said, with a “new, more recent player that maybe speaks to a recruit,” but the Buffs aren’t in a rush to replace all of those images right away.

“We were in the (Pac-12) conference for a long time,” Jason said. “I don’t feel like it’s going to take away from our current affiliation with the Big 12 as we move into that.”

Several Big 12 logos are already on display around campus, though, and while the Buffs won’t erase their Pac-12 history, they are thrilled about the new era and celebrating their return to the Big 12.

“We’re excited about it,” athletic director Rick George told BuffZone last month. “It feels good.”