Big 12 puts title game talk on hold - again
Thirteen may be greater than 12, but two is definitely much larger than one.
After emerging from annual College Football Playoff meetings just one week ago touting his league's need for a conference championship game under the logic that "13 data points are better than 12," Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby met with reporters Tuesday evening following at his conference's spring meetings in Phoenix and admitted a title game had not been rubber-stamped by the Big 12's athletics directors and head coaches.
And, really, that's all that needs to be said. Extraordinary, unprecedented circumstances pushed Ohio State past Baylor and TCU for the fourth and final spot in last season's tournament, and we more than two decades of data says that will not happen again. While a championship game would indeed give one extra Big 12 team an impressive win, as Bowlsby himself has said in the past, there's no guarantee it's the right team. Just ask 1996 Nebraska, 1998 Kansas State, 2001 Texas or 2007 Missouri.
One sticky wicket that did appear to be ironed out Tuesday, however, was the ridiculous and embarrassing co-championship policy that got the conference tied up last fall like Andy Serkis playing a solo game of Twister.
A league championship is the most precious honor a conference has to bestow, and diluting its own product as the conference did in 2012 (with Oklahoma hoisting a trophy after losing head-to-head with Kansas State) and last fall (TCU-Baylor) never made any sense - other than to spread the bonus money wealth for the league's coaches.
Bowlsby said league will still pursue NCAA approval for deregulation of conference championship games - as it should, because the history of conference championship games is extremely arbitrary - the earliest a Big 12 title game could even be held even if it received unanimous approval today would be the 2016 season.
With that fact hanging in the air, there was no reason to nail down a hard stance today unless a unanimous consensus existed on one side of the debate or the other.
Though I have gone on record stating the Big 12 should avoid an annual title game, the CFP era is too fresh to draw any hardline stances. The same goes for the other side of the issue as well. For a conference that doesn't have a long history of harmonious decision making, agreeing on that is progress enough.
