Mike Gundy Not Pleased With Decision To Not Implement Big 12 Divisions

The Big 12 is reinstating its conference championship game for one reason: Money. It is worth probably around $30 million (or $3 million a team) but could be worth up to $50 million if a network wants to say *wink wink* “thanks for not adding Central Florida.”

Anyway, that game more than likely won’t help a Big 12 team get into the CFB Playoff because it’s going to be a rematch, and it is going to be a really difficult game for the No. 1 team in the league (and presumably the Big 12’s best CFB Playoff hope).

The Big 12 decided last week that it would not implement divisions so, for example, last year OSU would have played OU for the Big title a week after OU routed OSU. The No. 1 team has to beat the No. 2 team in two straight weeks.

Stupid, right? And lose-lose for the conference. Consider: If OU wins, Oklahoma State now has three straight losses. Does it still go to the Sugar Bowl? And if OSU wins, great, the Big 12 is kept out of the CFB Playoff.

Consider what David Ubben noted here.

The Big 12 played a title game 15 times from 1996-2010. On 11 occasions, the game had BCS title implications. Five times, the Big 12’s best hope to play for the national title game lost. And that was with divisions.

Assuring the final game of the Big 12 season is even more difficult for the best playoff hope is only going to lower that batting average. And without the ability to put as much space between rematches as possible, the league is guaranteed to get a title game every once in a while that nobody wants to watch and is grossly unfair to its regular-season champion.

Big 12 coaches voted 7-3 to implement divisions, according to ESPN because of course they don’t want the scenario above to play out. If you have divisions, you still get a rematch, but you at least ensure that rematch isn’t a week or two after the two teams played.

Max Olson said this well for ESPN.

Playing Bedlam again a week later at a neutral site doesn’t really help anybody. And if the Sooners somehow lose the rematch, the Big 12 has no playoff team. But at least this extra game would make the Big 12 more money.

Weee!

Mike Gundy was totally thrilled with the whole thing.

“Every time that we do something, people say, ‘Well, the Big 12 is different,’” Gundy said on Monday. “We’ve got a championship game like everybody. If we had divisions, we’d be the same as everybody else. But now we’re not. That’s why I didn’t think it was for what’s best. There’s supposed to be statistical data that says this gives you the best chance to be a playoff team in the deal.

“I don’t believe that either, because the best chance to be in the Final Four is one, get one loss at the most in your league, and play a non-conference schedule and don’t lose any games. They call and get your opinion, and they throw it in the trash.”

Or THE GARBAGE!

The Big 12 is trying to have it both ways. Money and the CFB Playoff. It is doing a disservice to its institutions to try and have both. Rarely is the regular season Big 12 champion going to boost itself into the CFB Playoff (if it wasn’t already there) by winning a regular season rematch it presumably already won.

More often than that scenario happening, the team with no chance at the CFB Playoff is going to upset the No. 1 team and the Big 12 will sit at home for the Final Four. Having a conference title game with a conference so small everyone plays everyone else every year is totally asinine. The Big 12 keeps screwing itself into the ground.

I am all in on what Jake Trotter said here on ESPN. It might be the smartest take I’ve heard on the entire Big 12 nightmare since Missouri and Nebraska ejected.

The Big 12 has to stop being its own worst enemy. You know why people think the Big 12 is unstable, unsteady and indecisive? Because its own board chair termed the league “psychologically disadvantaged.” The conference really wasn’t in that bad of shape at the time David Boren uttered that phrase.

The TV distribution was on par with the ACC and Pac-12. The tier 3 revenue some of the schools had been generating was beginning to be significant. Oklahoma was about to make the CFP and the Final Four. Instead of building on all of that, the Big 12 went predictably went haywire, and conducted a overly dramatic, drawn-out process that did nothing for the league except give it a championship game.

But at least everyone will get paid for their efforts!