You didn't answer the question. I already went over this already but since you apparently can't read I'll lay it out again. The Big 12 concluded it's 2014 season with the #3 team in the country winning by 50 & the #6 team beating the #9 team by a lot. These things took place on the last Saturday of the season, hours before OSU beat Wisconsin in the Big 10 championship game. When the Big 12 games concluded NO ONE thought they would get left out.
Now let's just say that these two games happened on Thanksgiving weekend and not championship weekend. Why in the holy hell would the Big 12 force the #3 school to play either the #4, 5, or 6 team in the country? If Baylor beat TCU in this scenario there is no way to ensure that they would jump OSU, as a matter of fact I think it's pretty safe to say they wouldn't.
So I'll ask one more time, who is making the last minute decision to play these games and are they forcing the teams to play? Also please come up with a hypothetical situation where doing this would be mutually beneficial, or even beneficial to one team. Thanks
I'm not sure what all you guys are arguing about (I didn't read the whole history), but I think TCU was #3 and Baylor was something like #6, right?
Are we contending that we don't think the winner of #3 TCU/#6 Baylor wouldn't have gotten in over #6 OSU beating #9 Wisconsin?
Not arguing, but trying to understand what it is we're trying to hash out here.
It's kind of convoluted because you have to create some scenarios that didn't exist because the root of this conversation is that it would be a good idea for the Big 12 to decide after the games are played on Thanksgiving weekend to play an extra game if they need one. I'm essentially telling him that the Big 12 didn't know they needed one until after the committee made their final picks, and the Big 12 can never know they will need one, among other plainly obvious issues with deciding to play an extra game 6 days later. In this scenario TCU would be foolish to want to play an extra game when they were already in the top 4 and even if they did there's no guarantee that the committee wouldn't have played the "body of work" card to justify OSU over whichever team won that game.
The committee dropping OU to fourth this weekend was pretty telling. Essentially, the committee was saying: a 12-1 conference champ is better than an 11-1 conference champ. In other words, OU got in because Stanford was 11-2. If Stanford would've been 12-1, I really think OU would've been left out. And, I can't really blame the committee for coming to that conclusion.
With that information, I think you could develop
some cut and dry rules as to when the Big 12 would have a championship game:
1. If a Big 12 team is 12-0, no championship game.
2. If two Big 12 teams are 11-1, have a championship game.
3. If the two best Big 12 teams are 10-2, have a championship game.
4. If the two best Big 12 teams are 9-3, etc. etc.
After that, it obviously gets a little trickier. Part of the equation would be whether the other conference have two loss teams. So, if 10-2 Florida State is playing 10-2 North Carolina, and we have one 11-1 team, don't have a championship because 11-1 is better than 12-2, which means we will be in front of the ACC champ. In terms of resolving these situations, you could do this: ask the two teams eligible for the Big 12 championship game if they want to play. If they both say "yes," play it. If not, don't play it.
I don't think we will ever go there, but I also 100% agree that the Big 12 could get a tactical advantage by implementing the above rules. If Baylor and TCU had played last year, there is no doubt in my mind that the 12-1 winner of that game would have had a BETTER chance to get in.
One other thing: My sense is that the last two championship weekends have been very "chalk" in terms of the results. Meaning that no two-loss teams have gotten in, yet. In most years, I believe, there will be at least one two-loss team in the playoffs. Hell, LSU got into the BCS title game with two losses. If an 11-1 team is preferred over an 11-2 team, I think the current format of the Big 12 gives us a slight advantage over other conferences (even though we could buttress that advantage by having a "maybe" championship game).
