Conference Stays With Existing Members & Relies On Regular Season To Determine Champion
In a time when conferences are expanding way beyond their geographic area, certain conference teams only play other conference teams every few years and traditional rivalries are disappearing, it’s good to see the Big 12 vote against expansion.
In the Big 12, each team plays every other team in the conference. There’s no East vs. West (or “Leaders” and “Legends” ). You play each team and you have a true conference champion – the head-to-head matchup should settle any issue.
Sure, it’s bad for PR. The conference’s best teams sit idle while the SEC, Big 10, Pac 12 and ACC are on national TV playing conference championship games. And that lack of final-week exposure could eventually cost the team a spot in the College Football Playoffs (tho it didn’t stop Oklahoma from making it in 2015 and the solution for other teams is not to have Minnesota be your biggest out-of-conference game of the year).
Sure, perhaps the reasons for voting against expansion were not to keep the teams playing each other every year – and did the conference shy away from another competitive team in Houston? – but that’s the end result. And it’s refreshing in today’s expansion-explosion world.
Plus, the conference reached way beyond its borders a few years ago to add West Virginia and that’s just not a good fit.
The national media is making this look like a foolish move by the Big 12 but those people can’t see out of their tunnel-vision binoculars. They should be celebrating the fact that – at least for the time being – one conference has turned its back on wanting to be a super conference.
Plus, bigger is not necessarily better.
Instead of criticizing the Big 12, people should applaud it. Because at this point in time, it’s the right choice for college football.
Now, Texas, please get A&M back on your schedule and Oklahoma resume your rivalry with Nebraska. And play both on Thanksgiving weekend. You want PR for the Big 12 – that would give he conference a lot more exposure than a conference championship game.
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