PHOENIX -- In almost a complete reversal from last week, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said Tuesday his league has little interest in adding a conference championship game.
The conference had been the only one among the Power Five left out of the first College Football Playoff. It is also the only major conference that does not play a conference championship game.
Last week, Bowlsby said during the CFP spring meetings the Big 12 was at a “disadvantage” if it didn’t add a 13th game. The statement came after a source said Bowlsby “pushed” CFP Selection Chairman chairman Jeff Long for clarification on why either TCU or Baylor was left out of the top four.
"What we heard is if we don't go to a championship game, we're at a disadvantage,” Bowlsby told reporters last week. "All things being equal, 13 games are better than 12 games. That's what we heard. So that gives us clear enough direction that we're coming in at least at a modest disadvantage. We need to do whatever we can to mitigate that."
"I surmise we will be moving in that direction [of a championship game]," he added, "knowing what we now know."
Bowlsby met with league athletic directors Tuesday morning and coaches Tuesday afternoon during the league's spring meetings.
The Big 12 was upset when TCU dropped from No. 3 to No. 6 in the final CFP Rankings despite beating Iowa State by 52 on the last day of the season. Baylor, which beat TCU and ultimately shared the Big 12 title with the Frogs, finished fifth. An upset in one of the other conference title games might have allowed one or both into the top four.
"We were so close to being golden," Texas Tech AD Kirby Hocutt said.
When asked if he overreacted to Long's interpretation, Bowlsby said, "Maybe I did. I'm not immune to that."
The conference continues to support deregulation that would allow the league to sponsor a championship game with less than the currently NCAA-mandated 12-team minimum. That change is expected to pass with little opposition in time for the 2016 season.
"They told us that maybe we're disadvantaged with[out] a 13th data point [game]," Bowlsby said. "It would be cruel and unusual punishment to say, 'Oh and by the way we're not going to allow you to deregulate' ... I have not encountered a single FBS commissioner who has opposition to it."
With deregulation in place, TCU and Baylor could have conceivably met for a second time in a Big 12 championship game. Whether the winner would have had enough juice to overtake Ohio State is unknown.
Research compiled by CBSSports.com showed that favorites in conference championship games lose more than 30 percent of the time. An underdog has at least covered the point spread or won outright half the time since such games began in 1992. That's significant in an age when a human committee is picking the playoff field.
Before Bowlsby's proclamation, there was no consensus in the halls of the Arizona Biltmore here at the spring meetings.
"In the case of the ADs, they were pretty thoughtful," Bowlsby said. "We met the Monday after the selection show and there were a few raw nerves."
By Tuesday, TCU's Gary Patterson had become introspective.
"Every time there's an opportunity to lose, there's an opportunity to lose a job," said Patterson, who recently criticized the process for the first time. "The less games I play, the better off I am."
Bowlsby's change of heart may have come down to the power of the present indicative plural. "Thirteen games are better than 12" suggests that would be the case every year in the CFP. If Bowlsby had said "13 games were better than 12," that would have isolated the Big 12's predicament to 2014.
Long indicated as far back as pick 'em day in early December that Ohio State slipped into the No. 4 spot after beating Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten Championship Game. That was the second-largest margin of victory in the 23-year history of league championship games. Meanwhile, Baylor and TCU were winning regular-season finales on their home fields.
"Do our strengths outweigh our weaknesses? I don't think we know right now," Bowlsby said. "Is the game worth the risk and is the disadvantage so significant that we have to do something to respond to it? I think the jury is still out on that."
