Big 12 Exposes Ugliness of Conference Championships

Lisa HorneDec 6, 2008

The unfairness of conference championships has finally reared its ugly head and been put on display for all those who refuse to see the light. The beacon of inequality and greed has now shone on the Big 12—the glare is blinding.

The Big 12 Championship will prove nothing if Oklahoma wins—it is the better team. If Missouri wins? Total chaos, and proof that conference championships don't reward an entire season, they reward one game.

The total absurdity of the situation is obvious—if Oklahoma wins, the Sooners go to the BCS championship game, but if Mizzou wins, it's the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl in Arizona. Two different games for the winner simply because both teams are not worthy of a title game berth.

It's No. 1 vs. No. 4, and it should be No. 1 vs. No. 2—after all, isn't a conference championship all about the two best teams playing for the crown? Unfortunately for the Big 12, it's all about a division's winner, not the best two teams in the conference. And that is the very problem of conference championships—they don't reward the best two teams in the conference.

Compounding the entire issue is the greed involved in this game. This isn't about crowning the true champ, it's about each Big 12 school getting at least $800,000 in payouts from this game. The very reason conferences race to get to that magic twelve-team number is to have a conference championship game and get a windfall even if their team isn't in the conference championship.

Baylor and Iowa State rake in a cool 1.6 mil for being dreadful this year. Life is good, isn't it?

Yes, this is about greed, but that greed is because of the lingering practice of scheduling soft non-conference games—the payouts each school has to pay to schedule these games is mind-boggling.

Nebraska had to pay Virginia Tech $300,000, Western Michigan $800,000, San Jose State $800,000, and New Mexico State $825,000 to play the Huskers. Think that $800,000 payout from the conference championship game helps soften the scheduling payout bills? Of course.

It's complicated, but also transparent—the softer the team you schedule, the more you have to pay to have them be your patsy. LSU, who had an easy non-conference schedule, paid three teams $750,000 each ( Troy, North Texas and Appalachian State) while Tulane got a measly $600,000, making their non-conference payouts total 2.85 mil.

So who was at the bottom of the list's bigger expense teams (page one) in terms of lowest conference payouts? A Pac-10 team—Arizona State. A team that doesn't have a conference championship. Coincidence? Hardly.

You don't have to be a genius to figure out what the thought process is here—schedule patsies, pay them tons of money to be a punching bag and therefore inflate your win columns. By being in a twelve-team conference, you will recoup a major part of that expense by the conference championship game's payout, even though your team never played in it.

The best part? Your three or four wins over the patsies will pretty much guarantee a bowl of some sort—since your team will only have to win two or three conference games—which translates to an additional six or seven figures. It's no longer athletic competition, it's greed.

The reality of all of this is that two teams in the Big 12—Texas and Texas Tech—have better records than Missouri. Proponents of conference championship games will say that if those two teams had "taken care of business," they would be in position to vy for the conference crown. But Mizzou didn't take care of its business, and is vying for the crown.

Three teams in one division all have one loss, while a team in another division, Missouri, has three losses—including a huge loss against Texas—yet it is in the big game.

Texas beat Oklahoma, yet the Longhorns are staying home to watch the the team they beat play the other team they beat. Fair? Hell no.

These twelve-team conferences need to jettison their flotsam—in the Big 12's case, Iowa State and Baylor—play everyone in their conference and only schedule three non-conference games. As long as they continue to have conference championships, there will never be a playoff in college football.

This fact remains—there cannot be an eight-team playoff without ditching conference championships games. It can't work with the current conference championship games scheduled in the first week of December, and that is the exact reason why the eight-game playoff suggestion was voted down this last spring in Florida.

Those who have conference championship games do not want to give up those payouts. Blame the 12-team conference commissioners for the lack of playoffs.

In the meantime, they are laughing their way to the banks and will continue to put on mythical conference championships, frustrating football teams who have been left out in the cold.

This year, no one is laughing.

Click here to see the list of non-conference games' payouts.

Copy and paste the following link to Richard Keenam's exceptional article, which is beautifully written and explains alternatives to stop the chokehold that conferences are putting on college football: