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What the Big 12 must do in order to avoid becoming irrelevant in college football

By Tyler Waldrep

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Which conference has 10 teams and is quickly becoming irrelevant? Hint: Even the conference’s name is living in the past.

A year ago the College Football Playoff ushered in a new era of the sport, but in Big 12 country it’s hard to tell that anything has changed at all.

The Big 12 once again came up just short in qualifying for the championship portion of the postseason. Baylor and TCU, ranked 5 and 6 respectively, found themselves just out of the money. In other words, the Big 12 stayed true to form.

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The Big 12 is the only Power 5 conference that has not competed for a national title in the last five years, but it does not seem like too long ago the Big 12 was competing with the Pac 12 to be the second best conference in the land.

Those were the days when the ACC was labeled a “basketball conference,” and the Big Ten lacked the star power the other conferences possessed.

That “basketball conference” won the national championship two years ago. Just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, the ACC followed that up with a semifinal berth this past season. That’s far more than the Big 12 can boast.

Forget Ohio State’s recent national championship. The “talent poor” Big Ten just had three players drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft. The Big 12 only had two, and the disparity could get even worse. Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh look poised to return the Big Ten to its former glory.

Time is running out for the Big 12. The early years of the playoff system could ingrain certain subconscious prejudices in the minds of the committee and the public.

It was already assumed in the last preseason that the SEC, thanks to its previous dominance, would get at least one team in the playoff. The discussion in large part centered on which one of the other four Power 5 conferences would find themselves without a chair when the music stopped.

Perhaps that assumption could spread to the other Power 5 conferences. How many seasons can the Big 12 get left out before national perception eliminates the Big 12 from discussion before the season ever starts?

On December 6th the argument raging around the country was whether TCU or Baylor deserved to get in to the inaugural playoff field. When the dust cleared many, including a majority of Big 12 officials seemed shocked that neither team ended up making the cut.

The reality is that the Big 12 should have expected to be left out. The Big 12 has not had a team ranked in the top 4 headed into bowl season in four of the last five years. The one exception came in 2011 when Oklahoma State was ranked third behind LSU and the eventual national champion, Alabama.

The Big 12 failed to learn its lesson then. If Oklahoma State had played in one more quality game — and won it — then the Cowboys would have had one more win than Alabama. That in all likelihood would have been enough to edge Alabama out of the number two spot.

Lack of a conference championship game once again hurt the conference this past season. Going forward the Big 12 should adopt a conference game. If that means expanding and including teams like BYU then so be it. The Cougars could not be less competitive than Kansas has been lately.

The conference might be able to have a title game without expansion in the near future. Last month CBS Sports reported that rules requiring conferences to have 12 teams to play conference championship games could be done away with as early as 2016.

A conference game is not without its own drawbacks. The Big 12 could find its would-be national championship contender upset in a conference title game, but at least that team’s hopes would live or die based on their own efforts.

A conference title game won’t guarantee the Big 12 a spot in the playoff, but it would give the conference a fighting chance and that’s something they desperately need to avoid becoming irrelevant.

Next: Top 10 Big 12 Quarterbacks Going Into 2015

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