Orlando Sentinel: Big 12 wants NCAA to allow league to hold title game

[TopFrog]

Orlando Sentinel: Big 12 wants NCAA to allow league to hold title game

Matt Murschel | College Football 365

The Big 12 will seek a waiver from the NCAA that would allow the league to hold a conference championship game despite only having 10 members.

Under the current NCAA rules, a league can only hold a conference title game if it is composed of at least 12 members.

The Big 12 has been under 12 members since Nebraska and Colorado left in 2010. The league also lost Texas A&M and Missouri this past offseason, but managed to add TCU and West Virginia to counteract the loss.

According to Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, the league wants the NCAA to grant them special consideration.

“At a time when lots of deregulation is taking place, it seems a little bit odd that the NCAA would be describing how we determine our champions,” Bowlsby told the Associated Press Wednesday night. ...

http://www.orlandose...,0,7495138.post

 

[An-Cap Frog]

Great idea...

 

[God Dog]

Bowlsby is beginning to strike me as an idiot.

 

[ms19]

Excuse to not add 2-4-6 teams? Conference Championship game can knock you out of national title game... Now this? I also think he is an idiot!

 

[Frogs Reign]

Not sure I understand or agree with a Conference Championship Game when you play a round robin regular season schedule in the Big 12 (with 10 teams) and have already determined the best team. Perfectly understandable when you have 12 or more teams and you don't play everyone and the conference is broken up into divisions.

 

[An-Cap Frog]

The prohibition to a conference title game to conferences with less than 12 teams is arbitrary.

Right now the 10-team conference model is superior to the computer portion of the BCS formula. A conference title game would work to chip away the human poll component by adding a perceived champion of the conference, however we have to avoid the PAC-12 Stanford\UCLA match-up two weeks in a row, I believe that hurts the brand image.

 

[An-Cap Frog]

Not sure I understand or agree with a Conference Championship Game when you play a round robin regular season schedule in the Big 12 (with 10 teams) and have already determined the best team. Perfectly understandable when you have 12 or more teams and you don't play everyone and the conference is broken up into divisions.

The computers clearly do not like the watered down conference schedules that a 12-16 team league promotes. How do we compete with the SEC which has a lock on perception?

 

[weklfrog]

A conference champion has already been determined by the round robin. Everyone has already played everyone else. A fake championship game between the two top teams will only add the possbility of muddying the waters. It won't add significantly to strength of schedule because the two teams have already played each other.

 

[God Dog]

How do we compete with the SEC which has a lock on perception?

Beat Oregon and aTm.

 

[An-Cap Frog]

Beat Oregon and aTm.

That certainly helps. But the SEC had a ton of 10-2 teams because those 10-2 teams played each other sparingly. The computers realized that fact and discounted their rankings based on SOS factors. Is it better to go the same route, like the Big 10 and PAC-12, or diffreniate your product a bit and capitalize on other components of the BCS formula? It's an interesting discussion. I sort of feel that there is no wrong answer when clearly the Big XII model makes more money per school.

 

[Pure Purple]

Having two teams play each other twice during the

course of a season seems somewhat redundant.

 

[An-Cap Frog]

Having two teams play each other twice during the

course of a season seems somewhat redundant.

Certainly on back-to-back weeks, which could happen, makes no sense, however would KSU versus OU for a second time in 2012 have been that bad?

 

[Aloha Frog]

Just about every conference has a basketball tournament to determine who gets the automatic bid to the NCAA. I've always hated that but those conference tournaments are all about money. I assume that's the motivation here as well.

 

[West Coast Johnny]

So the Big 12 doesn't want a championship game - they just want to deregulate college football.

Bowlsby must think we are stupid if he thinks we will believe this. The big 12 probably has some scheme its putting together that we don't know about.

 

[Limey Frog]

I don't get the argument that this helps revenue. CCGs are worth around $5M at current market rates. That's $500K per school. The play-off is projected to add tens of millions in extra revenue to the conferences with participating schools. How often is a CCG upset going to cost more in lost playoff revenue than it adds?

My only hope is that the conference is trying to move ahead with planning for a CCG knowing that future events will almost certainly bring in new members who cannot be named at present.

 

[Froglaw]

ut speaks!!!!!!!

 

[froginaustin]

Unless I'm misremembering, the NCAA told some other conference "no" when asked to relax the rules to allow a CCG in a conference with <12 teams. I think the requesting conference might have proposed 2 divisions, though (if this distinction makes a difference).

Bowlsby's request begs for conspiracy theories, with my favorite being that he knows the NCAA will say "no", and then Bowlsby can go back to his membership and say "Told ya. We need to invite 2 more." The factor that makes this theory somewhat sensible is that there may be informal pressure from the SEC if not a contractual requirement for a CCG before the "champions bowl game". I can't imagine the SEC graciously permitting the B12 to divide its half of the "champions bowl" money 10 ways, when the SEC divides its half 14 ways.

If we end up in a playoff with an auto invite to a conference champion, or even weighted consideration to a conference champion, I find it hard to imagine that either the SEC or the B1G would tolerate that arrangement with a conference that only sliced the pie 10 ways to their 14 each. I think the B1G will try to insist on an auto invite for their champion. That would be consistent behavior for Delaney.

 

[Delmonico]

I can't imagine the SEC graciously permitting the B12 to divide its half of the "champions bowl" money 10 ways, when the SEC divides its half 14 ways.

If we end up in a playoff with an auto invite to a conference champion, or even weighted consideration to a conference champion, I find it hard to imagine that either the SEC or the B1G would tolerate that arrangement with a conference that only sliced the pie 10 ways to their 14 each. I think the B1G will try to insist on an auto invite for their champion. That would be consistent behavior for Delaney.

I doubt they care how many ways its divided. Don't see anybody worried about how the Pac 12 divides their money.

 

[KillerFrog InD KitchenSink]

It would allow the league to go to 8 conference games so it can pursue these alliance deals with the SEC and ACC (potentially both). Obviously the TV deal includes 9 conference games, but if that is replaced with an alliance deal, they'd prob have no problem with it.

I think people think this is in leiu of expansion, but whether or not this goes through probably won't affect whether or not the league expands.

 

[OldSchoolFrog]

Some Austin attorney read the fine print on the GOR, and somewhere it says "If the NCAA fails to allow a championship game, then UT has full right and....... "

Deloss: Hey [elbows Bowlsby] ... Time to ask for that something they will never say yes to. [smiling]

Bowlsby: Ummm. The Big XII proposes that...

Fade to scene at TCU