It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time to kickoff another round of college football roundtables. Thus far, we’ve discussed the best coaching hires, the worst coaching hires, the biggest surprise team, the most disappointing team, impact transfers, and intriguing quarterback situations. Last week, we talked about next year’s NFL draft and sleeping giants in college football.
Today, our staff discusses Big 12 expansion and whether it’s a good idea.
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Question: Should the Big 12 expand?
Terry Johnson:
On Twitter @SectionTPJ
To quote the legendary Captain Rex Kramer from Airplane!, “No… that’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do.”
All kidding aside, many people want to see the Big 12 expand because they think it will make it easier for the league to reach the College Football Playoff. And why shouldn’t they, since there are studies out there that suggesting that it would, including one which said the odds would increase by as much as 15% with a larger conference.
However, these simulations ignore one very important fact: it’s impossible to know what factor(s) will influence the Selection Committee the most. If we’ve learned anything over the past few years, it’s that the committee’s thinking changes from week-to-week, and what’s important one week might not be the following week.
Since there’s no way to write an algorithm that can measure human behavior, most of the studies are essentially meaningless.
I realize at this point that many Big 12 fans still believe that the conference was left out of the College Football Playoff in 2014 because it didn’t have a championship game. While that argument seems logical, it’s important to note that Baylor’s non-conference schedule consisted of SMU (1-11), Northwestern State (FCS), and Buffalo (5-6). Co-champion TCU’s non-league slate was just as weak, including games with Samford (FCS) and SMU (1-11).
In other words, it wasn’t the lack of a championship game that doomed the Bears and Frogs: it was the soft non-conference schedule. Oklahoma certainly didn’t have any trouble qualifying for the field in 2015 after playing a tough road game at Tennessee to go with games against Akron and Tulsa, which both qualified for bowl games last year.
Simply put: the Big 12 doesn’t need to expand in order to make the College Football Playoff. All it needs to do is make sure that each team plays a tough non-conference schedule. With a marquee victory (or two) against a highly Power 5 conference opponent, it’d be virtually impossible to leave the Big 12 champion out.
Given that the lack of a championship game doesn’t hurt the conference, the only reason that the Big 12 would expand is because of the added revenue a title contest could bring in. However, I hope the league powers-that-be will resist this temptation, realizing that adding new teams (unless they’re from another Power 5 conference) will ultimately water down what is currently awesome product.
Bart Doan
On Twitter @TheCoachBart
I suppose if the money is there. On one side, you have a former Oklahoma governor on the Board of Regents saying it’s not. Then, you have the president who thinks it is. The common logic suggests that having a better chance at getting in the playoff means more money, but I’m not sure three years of research is definitive enough to make that claim with too much confidence.
That said, it’s pretty clear that perception means a lot to the CFB Playoff Selection Committee, sometimes beyond other forms of rationale. And perception is typically swayed by what a person sees last. And that typically isn’t Big 12 football because they don’t have a championship game.
Two years into this experiment, you could make the claim that the Big 12 is hurt by not having a championship game, and though they could have it with 10 teams, you’re inviting building your own self-doubt when you have rematches in a “championship” game that’s a guaranteed rematch versus one that may not be.
I don’t know that you could make the opposite claim. Personally, I don’t think you can really hurt yourself by collecting a few more years of data, rather than having what sometimes feels like a visceral reaction to the way the first season ended with Baylor and TCU being left out. There are no absolutes only two years in, but there are troubling trends, not many of which the conference seemingly can control.
Phil Harrison
On Twitter @PhilHarrisonCFB
Ask this question prior to the clearing of the decks for conferences with less than twelve teams to stage a championship game and the answer is likely different. But now that the league is able to pull the trigger on that little made for television party and the feeling is quite different.
For me, all of the reasons to expand had everything to do with being able to hold a championship game. The extra gate money, an added ability to put one more impressive feather in the cap of a national title contender, and a level playing field for all of the power five conferences were at stake.
No more.
So what’s to gain by adding another team? Not much really. You could argue that adding an additional team would give the league a better shot at getting into the playoff by virtue of simple math and more numbers, but that would be offset by the possibility of more teams beating up on each other. It just doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense as a knee-jerk proposition at this point now.
Before we dance off into the night though, let’s add one huge caveat to this snarky little equation. Money.
The one overriding reason that could trump everything is an ability to lure a prominent team in the footprint of a whale of a television market. As enticing as that sounds though, that seems more like a Lord of the Rings-type of expedition rather than a walk among the roses.
Until then, and only then, go ahead and add a championship game, but keep the number at ten. Sometimes the best things come in smaller packages, or so they say.
Joe Dexter
On Twitter @BuckeyeRadio
The biggest problem at hand is not that the Big 12 is interested in expanding to add a championship game. The issue lies in the fact that top-level officials believe expansion is the only option to stop the internal bleeding of losing power five level programs like Nebraska, Texas A&M, Missouri, and Colorado just five years ago or less.
The solution to the problem, though, doesn’t lie in just adding a band-aid to cover the wound.
Especially when all that is on the shelf is the UCF, Houston, UConn, BYU, Cincinnati, and Memphis type off-brands that don’t provide nearly enough support and stickiness to have a long-lasting impact, like the Johnson & Johnson name brands that have permanent homes in different conferences.
Instead of handling this issue like it’s a boo-boo, Big 12 tacticians and institutional figureheads need to realize that the bleeding is internal, and that the only way to save the conference is to cauterize the internal bleeding.
As we saw in 2015, the conference took major steps towards proving that it belongs at the big stage. In week 11, three teams sat in the top 10 of the CFP rankings.
More impressively, seventy percent of the league made it to the postseason.
The league’s beefed up scheduling led to more respect down the stretch of the season. That will continue with the league bolstering its non-conference schedule. As a whole, the Big 12 will face five teams that competed in New Years’ Day bowls a year ago.
2016 will be a strong year for the league with eight of the top 10 rushers returning from a year ago. In addition, every team outside of TCU will retain it’s starting quarterback from 2015.
Now isn’t the time to dilute the product just for the sake of creating an extra game at the end of the season.
As long as Texas and Oklahoma get along and continue to pave the road for the conference off the field, then things will be continue to improve without the need for expansion.
Especially once Charlie Strong figures things out in Texas.
