Written by Chris Hummer at 247Sports.com
Week 9, like the entirety of 2016, proved a trying week for the Big 12.
Its two most prominent programs (Texas and Oklahoma) won, but the conference saw its College Football Playoff hopes evaporate as Baylor and West Virginia fell. Their losses come just a few days after the Big 12 announced it would add a championship game in 2017 without divisions. A round-robin schedule isn’t good enough to determine a “One True Champion” anymore, apparently. A few weeks before that the conference announced a much publicized expansion search would end without taking a vote.
Add to that the headache created by Baylor’s sexual assault scandal and the apparent declines of the Longhorns and Sooners, and the Big 12 truly seems “psychologically disadvantaged” compared to the other Power Five conferences.
Things appear grave for the Big 12. Yet one bad year doesn’t necessarily forecast doom.
When it comes down to it, the Big 12 is a victim of a bad break to start the entire playoff process.
Had TCU or Baylor reached the 2014 Final Four instead of Ohio State – the Buckeyes leaped over both the Bears and Horned Frogs in the final week – the panic over the Big 12’s round robin format would be tempered.
That system, the only one in college football that pits a team against the entirety of the conference, is a sound one for determining a conference champion. The Big 12, at least the conference of a few years ago, decided it did not need a title game – an event that’s largely a money grab anyway.
It’s tough to play “what if.” But the playoff committee citing the Big 12’s lack of a conference championship game as the reason for its exclusion in Year 1 set off the chain of events that’s led to the mess the Big 12 is in today.
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