There's no need for Big 12 to overreact to Playoff snub

GRAPEVINE, Texas — In the immediate aftermath of a playoff snub, the responses from Big 12 country ranged from anger and frustration — see Baylor coach Art Briles — to what commissioner Bob Bowlsby described as "soul-searching" and notions the league might reevaluate its method for determining a champion.

When College Football Playoff selection committee chairman Jeff Long suggested Sunday that Ohio State, which slipped past Big 12 co-champions Baylor and TCU for the fourth and final playoff spot, benefited from playing in the Big Ten championship — an extra game as compared to the Bears and Horned Frogs — Bowlsby said he expected future discussion among league members about whether it should play a conference championship game. He even brought up the idea of conference expansion, though he quickly walked that one back.

But becoming the Power Five league that will watch the first playoff unfold from the outside, "will be a catalyst for discussion, for sure," Bowlsby said.

But he stopped short of saying it would prompt his league to change — which is a good thing. Disappointment is natural. Anger is to be expected. But don't overreact.

For the Big 12, it could have easily gone another way. Baylor and TCU finished Nos. 5 and 6, but they were only a few plays away from getting into the four-team field — maybe even both of them. And here's the bigger picture:

After the first regular season of the Playoff era, the only thing we know — and it's the one thing we knew going in — is that every year, someone is going to be sifting through the rubble, trying to figure out what went wrong. Or how and why they were wronged.

There are four slots and five power conferences. Controversy is a built-in feature of the system.

"There will be other years," Bowlsby said, "when it's somebody else that gets left out."

If Florida State had lost, if Ohio State had been a little less impressive against Wisconsin, who knows? As Long had said for several weeks, the margins between the contenders for the final playoff spot were narrow.

"It was 3-A, B, C, D," said Long, referring to the difference in last Tuesday's final weekly update. "It was that close to us."

Long said when the Big 12 declined to name a single champion, instead declaring Baylor and TCU co-champs despite Baylor's 61-58 head-to-head win, the committee didn't officially apply the "conference championships won" criteria to either team.

"In the other situations, we had definitive champions for those conferences," Long said. "That did enter into our discussions. It was deliberated, and it was left to individual committee members to make decisions."

The collective decision was for Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State, with Baylor and TCU on the outside. But before the Big 12 considers radical change, there's also this:

We still don't really know how the selection committee arrived at its decision.

Long, the Arkansas athletic director, is the only committee member authorized to speak publicly about the process. For the past two months, his comments have provided the only glimpses behind the closed doors of the Bluebonnet Boardroom at the Gaylord Texan Resort. The result has been something more opaque than transparent. That's not necessarily Long's fault, but more a reflection of the process.

If we've learned anything at all in this first season of the playoff system, it's that the criteria by which the committee ranks the "best" teams is amorphous — meaning whatever 12 members in a room determine they mean. And that the reasoning shifts from week to week.

Strength of schedule seemed to matter. Winning remained very important. And in the end, if the conference championship game was big for Ohio State and bad for the Big 12 — well, if the Buckeyes had beaten Wisconsin by seven points and Georgia Tech had completed the upset bid of Florida State, the Big 12's decision not to play that 13th game would have been genius.

Long insisted the committee "got it right." Just don't try selling that to the Big 12. The snub left TCU coach Gary Patterson waxing philosophical.

"I think you've got to give the process a couple of years (to see how it works)," he said.

Meanwhile, Briles appeared ready to whack anybody affiliated with either the Big 12 or especially the selection committee, which might not have enough patriotic Texans for his liking. In a news conference in Waco, Texas, that could have supplied lyrics for a half-dozen country songs, Briles said:

"When I die, they're not gonna bury me in Maryland. They're gonna bury me in Texas. When those people die, they're not gonna bring them down (to Texas) and lay their body to rest. They're gonna lay them to rest up there where they've lived all their lives and teams they follow and teams they know."

He went on to note that only Condoleezza Rice was "born in the South," and added, "when Archie Manning went off (took a leave of absence from the committee), I said, 'We're in trouble. … We need a voice.'"

He's clearly got one, and a message that was a fantastic fusion of frustration and Texas Forever. This year, the Bears are fuming and the Big 12 is exploring its options.

The league had already petitioned the NCAA to deregulate conference championships (currently, conferences must have 12 teams split into two divisions to stage a title game, so the 10-member Big 12 couldn't have held one if it wanted). Bowlsby even brought up the idea the Big 12 might reconsider the idea of expansion — though he quickly backtracked, saying it's a much larger issue involving multiple factors.

He also brought up, unsolicited, the idea of expanding the playoff field to eight — if only to shoot down the idea.

"The fact that we're unhappy," Bowlsby said, "doesn't mean the process is flawed."

At least, except for the error that's built in to the system.

"We're asking 12 honest people to make a judgment on who they think the four best (teams) are," he said. " … You can't empower them and then question the very judgment that you asked them to provide."