All the Big 12ish Conference news that is and isn't fit to read...
And some other stuff.
Prior to the emergence of yet another realignment saga, the hot topic just days ago was the coming changes to the BCS and the proposed four-team playoff to crown a national champion.
Besides the debate about whether a four-team or eight-team playoff makes more sense, the most pressing questions are the method of selection for those final four teams and the venues for the final three games. Should there be a selection committee as there is in basketball? The same BCS standings that currently select the final two teams? Some other set of computer rankings?
On Tuesday, Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds laid out his vision of how he would like to see those teams chosen:
All the Big 12-2 Conference news that is and isn't fit to read...
And some other stuff.
So is that it then? Are we done? Is it over?
Two weeks ago, on a Thursday afternoon after days of meetings, buffet lunches, tweets from reporters about buffet lunches, and DeLoss Dodds big timing Jim Delany, BCS director Bill Hancock finally made the announcement about college football's post-season that many have been anticipating for years: "I can take status quo off the table. The BCS as we know it - the exact same policies will not continue."
A few hours later, the first round of the NFL Draft started and we all moved on to debating the latest trends in NFL draft picks' socks. After years and years of painful exasperation, argument, hatred, and potentially unjust champions, the head of the BCS comes out and says the BCS is effectively done, and a college football-obsessed nation musters a collective "Meh"?
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
But look at that Bill Hancock quote again. That en-dash is quite curious, isn't it? Pregnant, if you will, with potential meaning. You can only imagine what he was about to say before he paused and continued; what he could have said instead, had he not caught himself. "The BCS as we know it is dead." It would have been a bookend. The logical and symmetrical valediction to be given at the end of a successful onslaught of rage by college football fans and reporters, embodied most notably by Dan Wetzel's 2010 polemic, "Death to the BCS." It could have been poetic.
But he didn't say it. He paused halfway through, however briefly. And then he said, "The exact same policies will not continue." Pregnant. Ambiguous. And decidedly not poetic.
All the Big 12 Conference news that is and isn't fit to read...
And some other stuff.
All the Big 12-2 Conference news that is and isn't fit to read...
And some other stuff.
The Big 12 has found the replacement for interim commissioner Chuck Neinas -- Stanford AD Bob Bowlsby, according to multiple reports, with the first emerging from ESPN.
Andy Katz, who broke the initial report, believes the timetable for an announcement could be as early as late this week.
More importantly, however, Bowlsby's connections to noted expansion enthusiast Larry Scott, the Pac-12 commissioner, have sparked speculation about whether the Big 12 will seek to expand back to 12 teams under Bowlsby's watch.
As pointed out by Brett McMurphy of CBSSports.com, the issue for some members driving the push back to 12 is stability, which the league has had difficulty achieving in recent years. However, there does not seem to be a consensus among the membership and unless the conference could add Notre Dame, having to split revenue further doesn't make much sense. The other top target seems to be Louisville, apparently ready to bolt from the dying Big East.
There's also the fact that going back to 12 teams would kill the current scheduling arrangement in football that allows each league school to play every other, which some coaches prefer to the division set-up and having to play a conference championship game that could kill national championship hopes.
The most significant task facing Bowlsby will be building consensus in a still-fractured conference, something former commissioner Dan Beebe struggled with mightily, but an area in which Neinas seemed to have more success.
Bowlsby was also heavily involved in the television negotiations during the last round for the Pac-12, which ended favorably for the league.
All the Big 12-2 Conference news that is and isn't fit to read...
And some other stuff.
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