Big 12 Football Making Life Harder Than It Needs to Be with New Tie-Breaker Rule

The Big 12 has finally clarified its championship conundrum that caused so many headaches last December. 

Well, sort of—not without bringing about more questions and tripping over its own feet. 

On Wednesday during spring meetings in Phoenix, the conference released its new tiebreaker procedures for 2015. The full list can be seen courtesy of Max Olson of ESPN.com, but the basic rundown is as follows: 

1) If two teams finish with the same conference record, the winner of the head-to-head game will be crowned the champion. This is exactly what happened in 2014 with Baylor and TCU. The Bears won the head-to-head matchup and should have been named the "One True Champion," as the conference slogan stated. However, the Big 12's hands-off/vague approach to crowning a champion was utterly perplexing. 

2) If three or more teams finish the season with identical conference records, the league office will take additional steps to break the tie. Once a team has been eliminated through a step, it is dropped from comparison. Once two teams are left, the head-to-head game will be used. 

This is where the wording of the tiebreakers muddles things, however. The first step in the three-way tiebreaker claimed, "The conference records of the three or more teams will be compared against each other." What it should have said, as Mike Finger of the San Antonio Express-News clarified, is that "the conference records against each other will be compared." 

This distinction is important because of the next tiebreaker step, which states, "The conference records of the three or more teams will be compared against the next highest placed teams in the conference (4, 5 and 6...)." 

Finger then tweets out an example of why the order of the language matters: 

"

Here's a fun (?) little example of why wording matters in the Big 12 tiebreaker: pic.twitter.com/hYbmeXYuE2

— Mike Finger (@mikefinger) May 6, 2015"

The "too long, didn't read" version is that, if the language of the initial three-way tiebreaker is confusing, a school could potentially have a case that it was not rightly named the champion based on the second step. What kind of response would that school issue to the Big 12 in that scenario? It's hard to say for sure, but it would create quite a mess. 

The third step of the three-way tiebreaker involves point differentials, which is a familiar route for anyone who follows English Premier League soccer (football).

"There's probably a little bit of apprehension about scoring differential, because theoretically it could contribute to running up the score," said Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby to Stewart Mandel of Fox Sports. "But when you get down to that level, there aren't a lot of great ways to break the tie. This is probably as good as any."

The fourth step of the tiebreaker procedure is also curious, as it claims, "The champion will be determined by draw at the Conference office" in a last-resort measure, but it offers no additional details. 

Does the conference draw straws? Does it flip a coin Friday Night Lights style?

The Big 12 has made a living over the past several months by creating questions to which there aren't clear answers—if there are answers at all. The head-to-head two-team tiebreaker should have been the definitive factor last season. While the lack of a conference championship game hurt the Big 12 in the playoff picture, nothing was as embarrassing as how the league handled its co-champions with its "One True Champion" motto. 

The three-way tiebreakers are convoluted, but they are made more confusing by the way they were written. That was an avoidable problem. 

Ideally, the Big 12 would like to avoid this whole thing by expanding back to 12 teams and hosting a conference championship game. The problem is there aren't any teams available that would increase the value of the conference through addition. In other words, adding Central Florida and San Diego State "just because" won't cut it (apologies to Central Florida and San Diego State). 

That said, what the Big 12 has now—a nine-game, round-robin conference schedule—isn't terrible. The reason why tiebreaker procedures are such a huge thing now is because Baylor and TCU finished No. 5 and No. 6 in the final playoff standings, respectively. Had one or both of those teams made the playoff, deregulated conference championship games and tiebreakers probably wouldn't be front-burner discussion points at the moment.  

This left the Big 12 on the outside looking in, and here we are. In a panic, the Big 12 tried to adjust its championship procedures in the way that some try to run before they can walk. The result is a confusing piece of paper that only begs more questions. 

Ben Kercheval is a lead writer for college football. All quotes cited unless obtained firsthand.