It's a classic misdirect that still stands up through the filter of 2014, although few are aware of it enough to appreciate its subtle brilliance. Sad, since it's the very brand of nonsense that is being passed off as reason by the Big 12 Conference.
In April of 2013, the NCAA announced that a four-team playoff would replace the Bowl Championship Series which had been in effect since 1998. The BCS had essentially served its sole purpose, which was to put an end to multiple national champions. But the system had its flaws. Just ask the 2003 USC Trojans, who ended the season ranked #1 in both polls yet weren't even chosen to play for the BCS championship. Or the 2001 Oregon Ducks. Or the 2004 Auburn Tigers. Or the 2006 (or 2009) Boise State Broncos. You get the idea.
The announcement was received all across the nation, including the Big 12 conference headquarters. At the time the Big 12 was the only major conference who didn't have a conference championship game. Even the Pac 12 conference (then the Pac 10), who had yet to extend the season an extra week to decide its title, added the game in 2011 to be played on the home field of the first-place school.
But the Big 12 decided to end its annual tradition in 2010, after Texas and Oklahoma (at the time, the conference's two strongest programs) leveraged the league out of its annual contest, with the argument that the extra game hurts the chances of a BCS representative being chosen from among its schools. And the argument that they would quickly make the Big 12 into the Big 12-minus-2 if it continued to play one.
While the conference may have made the right decision back then, it doesn't excuse its lack of responsive action in the 18 months since the College Football Playoff was announced. A lack of responsive action that cost two of its teams a shot at this year's national championship.
Yesterday the first College Football Playoff field was announced, and Big 12 co-champions Baylor and TCU were left on the outside looking in. The 12-member committee chose a different one-loss team, Ohio State, on the basis of the Buckeyes' strength of schedule and the fact that they were a true conference champion.
Loyal fans and alums of the two Texas universities cried foul, claiming the committee had erred in its decision. Others claimed that it was a difficult choice and a tough break for both schools. And a few wearing tin-foil hats said the fix is in, and accused everybody involved of conducting a rigged popularity contest.
Difficult choice? Tough break? Or is it the most incompetent move in all of college football since the Big 10's "one-representative" rule of the 1970s?
Where do I begin? I could start with the conference's ridiculous "One True Champion" ad campaign that aired at the start of the season. Yes, they actually took a proud stance against playing a championship game, a stance they ultimately couldn't back up. Or the Commissioner himself, Bob Bowlsby—yes, his name really does start with "bowls"—who refused to acknowledge a true champion at season's end. Or the out-of-conference schedules of the two co-champions, which, with the exception of a surprisingly good Minnesota team, are weak enough to make scrawny-armed Rob Lowe look menacing.
Nope, I'll go the obvious route. Ohio State edged TCU and Baylor by the slimmest of margins, according to the committee. If the Big 12 had a championship game in place, it would have created not just a definitive champion, but a champion with one extra top-10 victory on its resume. This would have been more than enough for either victorious team to earn the final berth in the four-team playoff.
Given the committee's selection criteria—which they made clear as a crystal football the moment they were selected as committee members—Bowlsby's decision to voluntarily forego one more quality win on the schedule of its conference champion is among the most irresponsible decisions I have ever witnessed in college football. And I grew up following Big Ten football in the early 1970s.
As a fan and son of a Michigan season-ticket holder, I watched the 1972-74 Wolverine teams amass a 30-2-1 overall record and not be allowed to play in a single bowl game—not one!—due to conference rules that prohibited more than one team from representing the conference in the postseason. Commissioner Wayne Duke realized the stupidity of the rule and lifted it in 1975, allowing Michigan to play Oklahoma in the conference's first bowl game outside of Pasadena.
But enough about the Wolverines, who seem to be testing the limits of the word stupid themselves over the past seven years. Back to the brazen incompetence of the Big 12. Without a championship game, their teams end up playing one less game than everyone else, let alone a surefire top-25 matchup. So in that final week their teams' strength of schedules plummet, or rather, every other conference's schools' strength of schedules skyrocket. This explains, for example, why #3 TCU can freefall from third to sixth position after a 55-3 win. It's not the committee's error in judgement. It's the commish's.
Yesterday Bowlsby admitted that the conference's lack of a championship game "may have had a bearing" on the decision. Gee, ya think? You had a chance to enhance your conference champion's chances by taking their 12-game schedule and adding a quality win to it, over either the nation's #3 or #6 team. That would have outgunned the Buckeyes' plastering of #13 Wisconsin, regardless of the score. You had a chance at re-creating a revenue building, ratings-boosting championship game (most likely at the new Jerry Dome), with the one matchup the entire football-speaking world wanted to see more than any other: TCU vs Baylor for all the marbles. And oh yeah, the extra $2 million the winner would generate by playing in the national semifinal. There's that.
But all of that is gone, at least for this season. Not because of a tough break. Not because one school or one network campaigned for their team. It is gone because the conference chose not to compete for its national football championship. In the words of Groucho Marx, "that's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard."
