Big 12 Commissioner Comments on Likelihood of Championship Game in 2016

Despite many calls for the contrary, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said Thursday it is "unlikely" the conference will add a championship game by next season, according to Jake Trotter of ESPN.com.

Bowlsby indicated that any major decisions on the matter would not come for at least a few more months, per George Schroeder of USA Today:

Because it only houses 10 schools, the Big 12 isn’t required to conduct a conference title game. Instead, it relies on regular-season conference standings. Title tiebreakers are determined by head-to-head scheduling and Top 25 rankings under the conference's current round-robin format that pits all 10 teams against each other one time.    

On Jan. 13, the Division I council adopted a proposal that would allow conferences with fewer than 12 members to hold championship games pitting the top two teams in the standings against each other. 

The move was clearly geared to accommodate the Big 12, as it's the lone Power Five conference that doesn’t hold a conference championship game. 

Yet despite the rule change, Bowlsby was noncommittal on if the Big 12 would implement a title game at the end of the regular season, courtesy of Max Olson of ESPN.com: 

"

I appreciate that what was acted upon today takes into account our unique 10-team, full round-robin scheduling model. However, this vote does not automatically mean the Big 12 will implement a football championship game. 

Our membership will continue to analyze its pros and cons, as we now know the requirements should we decide to go down that path.

"

Given that Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News noted Bowlsby and the conference bigwigs will be meeting this week to consider items such as a TV network and possible expansion, in addition to a title game, it's not a surprise the commissioner is remaining circumspect on the matter:

The Big 12 hosted a neutral-site title game for its first 15 years of existence, but it was eliminated after Missouri, Texas A&M, Colorado and Nebraska ventured to other conferences, leaving the conference with 10 members and below the requirement for needing a title game. 

Last year’s champion, Oklahoma, reached the College Football Playoff despite not playing in a conference title game like its trio of counterparts—Alabama, Clemson and Michigan State—which all played Top 25 opponents in their respective conference championship games to reach the playoff. 

In fact, Oklahoma was essentially the first playoff team to lock up a spot by winning the Big 12 outright in the final week of the regular season while sitting at No. 3 in the CFP rankings.

But the Sooners’ story contradicted the Big 12’s fate the year prior, when champion TCU tumbled from third to sixth in the final CFP rankings despite winning the conference title in its final regular-season game with a 55-3 shellacking of Iowa State. The CFP committee supplanted the Horned Frogs with eventual champion Ohio State, which won its Big Ten title game, 59-0, over Wisconsin. 

The knocks on TCU were that the committee considered its nonconference schedule a cupcake—the Horned Frogs played unranked Minnesota and Southern Methodist and Samford of the FCS—and that it didn’t have to play an extra game for the Big 12 title the way Ohio State, Alabama and Oregon did to qualify for the 2014 playoff. 

TCU also shared the Big 12 title with Baylor in 2014, a distinction that could’ve been determined outright in a conference title game.

Bowlsby even admitted a year later that he underestimated just how much emphasis the CFP committee would put on what he called a “13th data point,” referring to a 13th game when speaking with Doug Gottlieb of CBS Sports:

“The one piece of it that we really didn’t full understand, I think, was the 13th data point, and just how much weight the committee was going to put on that,” Bowlsby said in December of TCU’s exclusion the year prior. "And of course we still are in a situation where we don’t have that 13th data point.”

Here is a look at Bowlsby’s full interview with Gottlieb, which extensively covers the prospect of the Big 12 adding a title game:

The Big 12 will assuredly continue to contend for a playoff spot, but when it comes to tiebreakers, the Power 5 conferences that do play a championship game will have the upper hand.