The big 12 announced yesterday that they will actually have “one true champion” starting in 2015 and new rules will take affect that will determine the champion of the Big 12 by head-to-head and then a bunch of other stuff if it gets past that. CBS Sports Jon Solomon breaks down the tie-breakers after the head-to-head situation:
The Big 12 will no longer recognize multiple conference champions. The tiebreaker will not only settle ties for the conference champion but could help break ties for the Big 12’s Sugar Bowl representative during years when the Sugar Bowl is not a semifinal game and the Big 12 has a CFP participant.
In a three-way tie, the third tiebreaker scenario is scoring differential. Bowlsby said the Big 12 considered other options, such as nonconference strength of schedule and victories over the highest-ranked team as selected by the committee.
“There’s probably a little bit of apprehension about scoring differential because theoretically it could contribute to running up the score,” Bowlsby said. “But I just think when you get down to that level, there aren’t a lot of real good ways to break the tie and this is probably as good as any. … It gave us some comfort that a 21-7 win is more valuable than a 48-41 win. We were concerned does it favor a defensive or an offensive team?”
This makes sense and in the 2008 scenario, it would mean that Texas Tech would have been the first team out due ot the scoring differential and then it would go back to head-to-head, which would have meant that Texas would have been the champion.
SI’s And Staples also talks a bit about conference expansion and Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said that there just are not a lot of candidates:
One thing that will not happen is an expansion to 12 teams that would allow the Big 12 to stage a championship game under the current rules. While expansion rumors are great fodder for sportswriters hunting for offseason material, expansion doesn’t make financial sense for the Big 12. Quick, name the two schools that would allow the league to add $50 million a year in revenue, because that’s probably what it would take in the next few years to allow the current Big 12 members to keep the same slice of pie they would get in a 10-team configuration. No combination of BYU, Memphis, Cincinnati, Central Florida or South Florida would do that. “There aren’t a lot of obvious candidates,” Bowlsby said. “The other thing is we are splitting our resources 10 ways. So anybody that comes in is going to have to bring pro rata value in order to keep our schools from having to take a haircut.”
Texas Tech Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt talked yesterday a little bit about the college football committee: