For the first time in seven years, the Big 12 Championship is back. At 12:30 p.m. from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the Oklahoma Sooners and the TCU Horned Frogs will play for a chance to win the conference and potentially a trip to the College Football Playoff.
4 big reasons why the revived Big 12 Championship is a strange idea, and 1 reason it might be worth it
Oklahoma would’ve already clinched a Playoff bid, but now it’s on the line. Who could’ve predicted this?
Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
But folks, this game was brought back for mostly dumb reasons, and it could end up hurting the conference in the long run.
1. The Big 12 Championship will always be a rematch.
Rematches happen in conference title games — the SEC and some Group of 5 leagues have them this year — but they aren’t typically guaranteed to happen.
This game was in Norman, and the Sooners won 38-20. Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield had a huge night, throwing for 333 yards and three touchdowns.
Since the Big 12 is already made up of just 10 teams, each team plays each other round-robin. Previously, the team that finished first in the standings was given the conference title, which makes sense, right? So why have these two play a second time?
It seems as if the conference is more concerned with immediate rematches, as in playing a second time a week apart. Had the conference title game been around in 2016 or 2015, this is exactly what would’ve happened with Oklahoma and Oklahoma State:
This year, the Sooners enter in first place, and the Cowboys enter in second place. Because of tiebreakers, they’re guaranteed to finish atop the league, too.
Let us imagine it’s a year later. We’d have an exciting rivalry game coming up on the regular season schedule. No matter the result, the two teams would play again the very next week to decide the conference champion, even after one team beat the other to claim first place.
Could you imagine how asinine that would be? The stakes of a great rivalry game would be lowered in the regular season. If the regular season loser turned out to avenge its loss in the title game, it’d feel cheap.
And what happens if there’s a split? Pretend, again, there were a title game this year, instead of one starting in 2017. Imagine the Big 12’s anguish if Oklahoma won in Norman to move to 10-2 and 9-0 in the conference, then lost to a three-loss OSU team at AT&T Stadium the next week. It’d be disastrous for the league’s Playoff hopes.
The Big 12 moved Bedlam back earlier into the season because of that, but that didn’t fix the overall issue.
2. The whole thing is partly an overreaction to missing the 2014 Playoff, despite the three years since.
TCU and Baylor were named the conference’s “co-champions” since they both tied atop the conference, despite Baylor beating the Horned Frogs in October that season. The co-title, paired with Ohio State blowing out Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten Championship, was enough for the committee to reward the Buckeyes with a playoff bid. Committee chair Jeff Long said the selection was partly because of OSU’s extra “data point,” a term that’d become a buzz word in Big 12 expansion debates.
“The addition of a football championship game allows for a 13th data point for our teams under consideration for the College Football Playoff,” Bob Bowlsby even said during the announcement of the game’s renewal.
If the Big 12 didn’t have a title game for 2017, then at this point, that would’ve helped the conference’s playoff chances twice and only hurt it once
- Baylor and TCU missed out in 2014, partly because they didn’t play as many overall games or as many games against good teams.
- Oklahoma did fine without playing in a conference title game in 2015, clinching the CFP a week before anybody else.
- The Sooners would’ve made it fine in 2016, had they not lost to Ohio State.
- And in 2017, they would’ve clinched early again.
3. If TCU upsets Oklahoma, this could leave the conference out of the playoff entirely.
The Horned Frogs already have two losses and rank No. 11, and even a conference championship game victory is unlikely to boost them to No. 4.
More likely, it could open the door for other teams currently on the outside looking in, like, say, a one-loss Alabama that ... didn’t play in a conference championship game.
4. The Big 12 title games of the past definitely hurt the conference’s chances at winning a national title.
The game was played annually from 1996-2010. As Bill Connelly pointed out, it ended up doing more harm than good to teams in the title hunt:
The original Big 12 Championship, which capped each season from 1996 to 2010, cost the Big 12 four BCS title spots. In 1996 (Texas over Nebraska), 1998 (Texas A&M over Kansas State), 2001 (Colorado over Texas), and 2007 (Oklahoma over Missouri), upsets prevented teams from playing for the big prize.
In 2000 (top-ranked Oklahoma beat Kansas State by three), 2003 (Oklahoma got whacked by Kansas State but still made it), and 2009 (Texas survived Nebraska with a last-second field goal), the championship nearly cost the conference as well.
But like a lot of things within college football, the one reason why it makes sense is money.
According to estimates made over the summer, the game could bring in nearly $30 million in extra revenue for the conference.
And that’s actually why there’s a new Big 12 Championship.
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