The league is now in Phoenix this week for its annual spring meetings. The group simulated a 10-year block 40,000 times and gleaned a thesis from its data: If the Big 12, which now has 10 teams, were to add two teams to get back to 12 and re-institute its conference championship game, it would have a 10-15 percent higher chance of making the College Football Playoff.
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The latest information, per a CBSSports.com report, indicates that the league’s CFP hopes would be boosted by 10 to 15 percent in a given year if the league had 12 members, played eight nonconference games and staged an annual championship game in football.
Bob Bowlsby the Commissioner of the Big 12 said during the meetings that research was presented to the members of the conference that indicated switching to a 12-team conference, two divisions, with 8 conference games and a championship game, would give the Big 12 close to 4% more of a chance of having a team in the CFP. As Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News asked, would that slight bump be enough to get everyone onboard with expansion and a title game?
“Once we see all the pieces to the puzzle”, Bowlsby reiterated Wednesday, “we need to make a decision”.
“If we do nothing, we’ll be substantially behind a decade from now”, Bowlsby said.
The most logical fix for the Big 12 is adding two teams from lesser leagues, with many candidates coming from the American Athletic Conference.
Currently, Navigate told the conference, the Big 12 has a 62 percent chance of making the playoff in any given year, but it did not provide the odds any other conference possesses heading into each season. And while Memphis isn’t quite as appealing from a television market size as BYU, ever a favorite in the ongoing Big 12 expansion discussion, it lacks a few key negatives associated with the Cougars and makes sense as a geographic fit with another strong contender in Cincinnati. According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the UofM has been lobbying the conference for inclusion in a next round of expansion if it comes.
The Memphis publication highlights the city’s top Fortune 500 companies, its overall attributes and the U of M’s attributes, including its recent athletic accomplishments, particularly the resurgence of the football program.
– First, it’s important to note that Navigate did not base its study exclusively on the two seasons played so far with a four-team playoff.
– And, finally, that 800-pound Longhorn we spoke of earlier.
It’s believed seven of the 10 schools favor expansion. How valuable is the round-robin schedule and how much does the Big 12 lose if it abandons that? Texas is believed to be influencing Texas Tech’s and Texas Christian’s decisions to also be reluctant to expansion. But the first trip back to Lubbock for Cincinnati football coach Tommy Tubeville, who left Texas Tech to accept his current post, would be worth the price of admission to gauge crowd reaction. They would also provide a bridge to West Virginia, tying the conference together better geographically.
Against that backdrop, can the Big 12 afford to stand pat with its 10 members and embrace the status quo?
Regardless, the Big 12’s coaches and athletic directors heard the numbers, and if there was skepticism about the data they were presented, it wasn’t expressed publicly. It is the same publication he sent to University of Texas President Dr. Gregory Fenves in December, ostensibly to update Fenves of the U of M’s attractiveness as a Big 12 expansion candidate. Or doesn’t go, as the case may be.
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Trotter: Two is likely, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of four, either.
