Report: Big 12 Allowed Championship Game With 10 Teams, No Longer Need Expansion

A report from SB Nation has surfaced stating that the Big 12 Conference will be allowed to hold a conference championship game with just 10 teams, meaning there is no longer any need for them to expand.

"A high-ranking official at a voting conference told SB Nation it is “likely” that the Big Ten proposal will be amended to allow for a conference with round-robin scheduling to hold a football championship of its own, so long as that conference’s top two seeds compete in the game. That appears similar to what Dallas Morning News reporter Chuck Carlton floated last night as well."

I’m just exhausted by all of this at this point. The “will they expand?”, “won’t they expand?” rumors that been flying for years now is worse than anything Michael Schur has put out recently.

The Big 12 was always hemmed by their 10-team model. Without a championship game, teams in other Power Five conferences were allotted a 13th opportunity to prove to the College Football Playoff committee that they deserved to be in the top four. Teams like Ohio State, who blasted their way through Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship game to jump TCU and Baylor for that fourth spot two years ago.

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The sticking point for the Big Ten, who was leading the charge on championship games throughout the Power Five, was that a) the Big 12 only has 10 members and b) they refused to split their conference into two divisions. Well the Big Ten seemed to loosen up on both of these restrictions, allowing the Big 12 to host a conference championship game with a round-robin, 10-team format, thus no longer requiring expanding to 12 or more members.

And there’s the knife through the heart of Cincinnati, Houston, BYU (maybe BYU), Memphis, UConn, USF, and UCF fans. Their last lifeline into the Power Five has just been cut, one that probably won’t even be remotely extended for another decade or so.

For me, I’d find it as a relief if that was the case. Getting into the promised land would be nice but things aren’t especially bad here in the AAC. At one point the conference boasted four teams in the top 25. None of them were the Bearcats so it’s not like they’ve proven they’re head and shoulders better than everyone else in the Group of Five with the right to snub our noses at them.

The only really issue I’ve had with the AAC was their paltry media payouts. Cincinnati is currently making about $2 million less annually than they did in the Big East. But when you consider payouts from New Years Eve bowl games, and if UC was the actual team playing in one of them, the numbers start to even out drastically.

At the end of the day, again, I’ve grown tired of the constant back and forth rumors about the Big 12 and ACC expanding, not expanding, targeting Cincinnati, targeting other schools. It’s exhausting and I think we’d all find sanity in the fact that the Bearcats will be in the same conference, a solid one at that, for the near future.