Big 12 Championship Game won’t save conference

Big 12 leaders voted to bring back the Big 12 championship game two weeks ago at the Big 12 meetings, but will it really help?

The Big 12 has overreacted.

The Conference was thriving for more than 10 years until the trouble started. Nebraska and Colorado left, followed by Missouri and Texas A&M a year later. Despite the additions of West Virginia and TCU the conference has proved to be unstable and unwilling to come together to form a conference as strong as the old Big 12 once was.

The conference’s decision to add a title game while still at 10 teams and while keeping the round robin schedule is the definition of shooting yourself in the foot and here’s why.

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Having to beat a team twice is harder and most of the time not necessary. For instance, last season Oklahoma was the obvious “one true Big 12 champion” and easy choice for the college football playoff.

If the Big 12 championship game was in place Oklahoma would’ve had to face Oklahoma State for the second straight Saturday after beating the Cowboys a week before, making their path to the playoff more difficult than it needs to be.

Conference Championships are in place because in conferences such as the SEC or Big 10 not all teams face each other during the season, therefore, a game to decide the best team makes sense. However with just 10 teams in the Big 12, this doesn’t apply. Beating a good football team once is hard enough beating them twice, possibly in a short time span is difficult and unnecessary.

Adding injury to insult the Big 12 has put in place procedures that require every school to schedule at least one power 5 opponent per season. Getting through a season without a loss or with one loss, which is usually required to get in the playoff, is going to be incredibly difficult.

The Big 12 has essentially made it harder for its teams to get into the college football playoff because of one year of missing out in 2014.

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Obviously, there are ways to combat some of the smaller problems. Scheduling and division formations can help with teams meeting twice in a short time span but the bigger problems still remain.

The Big 12 is going backwards. The one thing that would be great for the conference going forward, a television network, was essentially ruled out at recent Big 12 meetings.

Expansion to 12 or 14 teams is still a possibility but without a TV network and larger share of money going to each team, the Big 12 is not going to lure any teams worthwhile to the conference.

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No offense to Cincinnati, Memphis, Connecticut, BYU, Houston and UCF but they are not going to make the Big 12 much stronger. To get schools like Clemson or Florida State, whose football programs would benefit strongly from going to the Big 12 from the ACC, a TV network is a must.

Instead, in a typical Big 12 move of late, they chose to make it harder for their teams to get in the playoff.