Big 12 championship game returns for 2017 season

The Big 12 will have a conference championship game beginning in 2017.

While the Big 12 continues to mull the possibility of conference expansion at their spring meetings there was one big revelation on Friday. The Big 12 will once again have a conference championship game that will take place in 2017.

There are still a lot of details to work out, such as where the conference championship game will take place and other logistics. One of the first steps is going back to two divisions with five teams in each division, according to Jake Trotter.

This is good news for the conference to once again get on the same playing field as the rest of their Power Five brethren as well as the Group of Five conferences who had a conference championship game.

The Big 12 felt they were at a disadvantage when it came to impressing the College Football Playoff committee because their member schools didn’t get a marquee game at the end of the year to boost their resume for inclusion in the four-team Playoff.

Skeptics will point out a conference championship game doesn’t mean much in a 10-team conference where every team already plays each other during the regular season. So what happens when there is a rematch in the conference championship game and the winner of the regular season matchup loses the Big 12 Championship Game?

The Big 12 has a year to figure that out. But their motto of One True Champion could be flawed again as it was two years ago when TCU and Baylor were co-champions and effectively cancelled each other out when it came to a spot in the Playoff.

This is the first step by the Big 12 but the next big step has to be the addition of two teams to the conference to make the Big 12, a 12-team conference and change the conference schedules so the conference championship game won’t be a guaranteed rematch.

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