PHOENIX -- The Big 12 may have broke camp at their Fiesta Summit spring meetings without a decision, but it left with a purpose.
“It’s looking at the long-term viability of the conference,” said Shane Lyons, West Virginia’s athletic director.
These expansion talks are mostly about the Big 12 living up to its name. An expansion to 12 teams (from its current 10) would at least provide increased security. Call it a buffer against further losses of teams in the future.
It’s looking more and more like expansion would also enhance the league’s prospects of playing in the College Football Playoff.
The league’s coaches and ADs were presented with data Wednesday that showed there’s a 10-15 percent better chance for College Football Playoff inclusion if the Big 12 expands.
During that presentation, the league was told by Navigate Research that in its current 10-team configuration the league has a 62 percent chance of reaching the CFP in any given year.
Sounds ominous ... and exciting ... and confusing. But that number only means something if there is a comparison. What’s the SEC’s percentage? The rest of the Power Five?
“They’re at a disadvantage” compared to those other leagues if they don't expand, said a person with knowledge of the presentation. “It’s clear.”
For the moment, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby is excited with the projection of getting into the CFP slightly more than six times over a 10-year period.
“But that also means you’re going to be left out four times,” he said, “which will be a swallow-hard moment.”
The Big 12 being left out once (in 2014) is why the league has sweated itself into this position. Expansion isn’t so much about money. One industry source said the financial gain would be minimal at best.
The Big 12 would have to split its bowl and NCAA Tournament revenues 12 ways instead of 10. And rightsholders Fox and ESPN wouldn’t exactly be happy. Taking in two American Athletic Conference teams -- let’s say, Cincinnati and Central Florida -- would mean those schools would get a per-year bump from about $1.6 million to more than $20 million.
“Why,” that source questioned, “because they changed the logo on their jersey?”
Good for the new schools. Net neutral for the existing schools.
This is mostly about breeding and preparing the best team possible for CFP consideration. The best way is to go undefeated. The Big 12 would be all but in. Since 1998, there haven’t been four undefeated Power Five schools in the same season. And there’s only four spots in the CFP.
Short of that, the Big 12 cannot be upset in that conference championship game. One problem: The league was most volatile in that space when it staged such a game from 1996-2010. The point-spread underdog either covered or won outright six games, which is almost a 40 percent fail rate. Overall in the history of league championship games, the underdog has won less than 30 percent of the time.
The whole enterprise to this point is an altered version of survive (with expansion) and advance (in the CFP by doing so).
Less than five years ago, the Big 12 was looking at the prospect of playing with eight teams in 2012. The addition of West Virginia and TCU allowed the Big 12 to survive.
“It’s more of an offensive undertaking than defensive,” commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. “It feels more like forward than backward.”
After two years of the College Football Playoff, the Big 12 is deciding the best way to compete for a spot in it.
It’s clear the league is trending toward expanding. The “who” part is confounding. Forget the assumption that West Virginia needs a “travel partner” -- a school close to Morgantown to help ease travel stress. West Virginia is almost 1,000 miles from its nearest conference rival, Iowa State.
“We don’t need a travel partner,” said Lyons, who sounds up for anything.
That would mean everyone is in play -- BYU, Central Florida, UConn, Memphis, insert your favorite team here.
There’s a good analogy in regard to the FBS’s smallest conference. Think of the little old lady who refuses to sell her century-old house while skyscrapers are erected around it.
That land is still worth a lot of money but those skyscrapers blot out the sun. Sooner or later, that little old lady’s garden dies out.
That’s the Big 12 these days as it contemplates its future composition.
“Getting left out [of the playoff] is not going to ever is going to be any fun but it also creates some of the suspense that goes along with it,” Bowlsby said. “There must a psychological name for it. You take more pleasure in your achievement knowing that someone has failed allowing you to get there.”
