Bringing back Big 12 title game comes with risks, but ultimately would be wise
Published: 1/31/2013 5:13 PM
Last Modified: 1/31/2013 5:13 PM
Maybe the Big 12 Conference is getting ahead of itself.
But maybe it’s not.
The Big 12, so often maligned for pandering to Texas and for lacking strong leadership over its first 15 years, a conference fractured and splintered and divided to the point of near-dissolution — twice — has decided to go against the grain, against the NCAA, and petition for a waiver should it someday desire to play a championship game in football.
With only 10 schools.
Applause to the Big 12 for going out on that limb.
An NCAA rule that only allows conferences with 12 teams or more to play a championship game, in and of itself, lacks teeth, if not common sense.
Who is the NCAA to tell a conference it can’t play a championship football game? The NCAA, per se, doesn’t even sponsor a championship in major college football. It only approves bowl games and then acknowledges championships awarded by others (the BCS, the Associated Press, et al). Furthermore, it has no real power over individual conferences, particularly when it comes to Bowl Subdivision (Division I-A) football. Conferences, as has become evident over the last three years, do whatever they want, and the NCAA either nods its approval or looks the other way.
At its core, the NCAA is a membership comprised of the schools it governs. It’s the schools who make the rules.
And one of those rules — bylaw 17.9.5.2 — is merely an “annual exemption” to bylaw 17.9.5.1.2, which limits student-athletes (in this case, football players) to participation in not more than 12 football contests per season.
Exemption C to that bylaw — “A conference championship game between division champions of a member conference of 12 or more institutions that is divided into two divisions (of six or more institutions each), each of which conducts round-robin, regular-season competition among the members of that division” — appears well intended, but where is the logic or legal grounds for telling a conference it can’t stage a championship game because it has a membership of 10 instead of 12?
Get this: The Big 12 wants to petition for a waiver to an exemption to a rule that shouldn’t be enforceable in the first place. Commissioner Bob Bowlsby is right to challenge this.
Anyway, regardless of the application of the rule or the granting of a waiver, playing a conference championship game may not be in the Big 12’s best interests.
There are two aspects to this.
First, money.
Just compare it to the BCS. Last season, the Big 12 came within a few hundredths of a percentage point of getting both OU and Kansas State into the BCS field. If not for Northern Illinois crashing the party, Big 12 schools would have shared another $6.2 million for getting an at-large team (OU) into the BCS in addition to the $23.6 million it got for its champion (K-State).
Money from past Big 12 championship games, which includes television revenue and gate receipts, never reached $6.2 million (though estimates for possible future games have been projected at around $7 million). If OU and K-State had played a championship rematch last season, there would have been no possibility of getting two teams into the BCS.
Of course, there’s another side of that argument.
The possibility of getting a second BCS participant (or, in the future, a second semifinal participant) is moderately unlikely even in the best of seasons. It happened six times in the league’s first 13 years, but none since 2009. And getting into a four-team playoff come 2014 will be much harder than getting into an eight- or 10-team BCS.
That’s money you can’t count on.
But the revenue from a conference championship game, whatever it may be, will be there no matter how good or bad the combatants are. Imagine if the Big 12’s two best teams both finish 10-2 — an all-too-likely scenario in which the Big 12 might get left out of a national semifinal altogether. In that case, that check from the first weekend in December would spend quite nicely.
As it stands right now, Big 12 schools each rake in $26.2 million a year, according to Forbes. That’s tops in the nation, and they’re doing it without a championship game.
But the real issue isn’t even money. It’s the competitive disadvantage of having to play an extra game.
The future — that is, the particulars around the coming four-team playoff — isn’t set. But the Big 12, or any league that’s not the SEC, has a better chance of landing two teams in the field without the threat of an upset in the championship game.
Playing a championship game means the team with the best regular season has to put everything on the line one more time, probably against a team it already has defeated. That doesn’t seem fair to the team that already won the league’s regular-season title.
But more than that is the risk of being knocked out of the playoff. Losing the Big 12 championship game cost Nebraska a shot at the national title in 1996 and did the same to Kansas State in ’98.
If the Big 12 wants national championships, why risk that by sending its best team into battle one more time?
Alas, there’s another side of that argument as well.
Winning a title game the first weekend in December, when all of college football is watching — including, come 2014, a know-it-all selection committee — might be just the thing that sends the Big 12 champion into the playoff field over a second SEC team or a Pac-12 or Big Ten or ACC champion.
Winning the Big 12 championship game helped propel Oklahoma into the national title game in 2004 (keeping OU ahead of Auburn) and 2008 (keeping OU ahead of Texas; though for the Big 12 that one was a push).
So while a championship game means the Big 12 occasionally could lose out on a few million dollars, it would be a reliable and long-term money-maker. Besides, playoff money will dwarf BCS money. And should the Big 12 miss the playoff, the league still swims in the bottomless revenue stream of its coming Sugar Bowl tie-in with the SEC.
And although a championship game loss periodically could knock the Big 12’s best out of the hunt for a national title, a win on “Championship Saturday” might likewise push a Big 12 team ahead of someone else and into the four-team race.
Bowlsby knows this. And he’s smart to pursue it.
Written by
John E. Hoover
Sports Columnist
