What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond?
I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
This week, the Big 12 is done playing — and I don’t mean football’s regular season is over.
The Big 12 Was Mad as Hell This Week — For Good Reason
Even to objective observers, the past few weeks have seen an undercurrent of disrespect for the Big 12 — and I don’t mean social media haters.
ESPN’s Desmond Howard seemed to think that picking the Arizona State-BYU game was beneath him a couple of weeks ago. The College Football Playoff Committee dropped BYU like a rock after two straight losses, as if it was just waiting for a reason to invalidate the Cougars.
ESPN’s weekly CFP Top 25 Rankings episodes have constant conversations about how many three-loss SEC teams will get into the CFP because, apparently, their parity is better than Big 12 parity.
On Tuesday, there was even a conversation about the possibility of the Big 12 being left out entirely if two Group of 5 conference champions got the remaining auto bids (yes, I watched. It’s my job to watch).
The vast majority of this came from a primary television partner of the Big 12. Now, I don’t expect ESPN to cover the Big 12 with sunshine and unicorns. But I do expect it to be fair. There doesn’t seem to be much fairness these days.
The Tiresome Rhetoric Coming Out of the Southeast
For the most part, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark has played the part of the diplomat. He praises the committee when he gets the chance, hails his fellow commissioners, and says he’s focused on making the league the best it can be.
But this week, he, his Big 12 colleagues, and their social media team suited up to fight back against this charade.
Start with this quote, which I dug up from an unrelated story, Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger and his history piece on the 12-team playoff. Yormark made his point about a Group of 5 school getting a first-round bye over his Big 12 champion.
“Based on where we sit today, I see no rationale for the Big 12’s champion not getting a first-round bye,” Yormark said. “The winner of our championship should receive a bye. I have a lot of trust in the selection committee, and I’m sure they’ll see it that way. Just look at the data. The data doesn’t lie. From a strength-of-schedule standpoint, all four of our schools at the top of the standings are ranked ahead of Boise State.”
Then, the SEC coaches, past and present, got involved.
Like him or hate him (or both), Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin is known to give great quotes. Recently, he put the Big 12, and to a lesser degree, the ACC on full blast. “It’s ridiculous, the difference of playing in the SEC and the ACC and Big 12,” he said. “To think that you’re looking at schools and you’re talking about, like, Clemson’s schedule and who they played over Alabama. It’s stupid. I’m not gonna name them. Take some of those teams that are up there that haven’t played anybody and put them down in the SEC, they’re .500 teams.”
Does anyone want to tell Lane that former Big 12 team Texas is playing in the SEC Championship on Saturday or nah?
Well, it wasn’t just him. It was his former boss and Alabama legend Nick Saban. On ESPN’s Pat McAfee, Saban took his own shot at the Big 12.
“If Ole Miss played in the Big 12, what would their record be?” Saban said.
Big 12 Social Media Account Sounds Off
That was it. That was the “mad as hell” moment for the Big 12. A few hours later, I found this:
Take a good look. That isn’t some random troll posing as a Big 12 account. That is THE Big 12 social media account. The official account. And, yes, that’s Ole Miss losing to three different Big 12 teams in three REAL games (all bowl games).
This isn’t the Big 12 of Old
Bob Bowlsby doesn’t live here anymore. The league’s membership took notice, as both TCU and Texas Tech joined in on the fun.
Even a former Big 12 quarterback got into the replies.
Now, are there SEC teams that have beaten Big 12 teams? Of course. That’s not really the point here.
Clark Williams, the league’s VP of Communications & Strategy, made the point.
He’s right. While Bowlsby was adamantly ticked about TCU getting dropped out of the playoff a decade ago, he did little to campaign for either the Horned Frogs or Baylor beforehand, which were tied at 11-1. The league wouldn’t even designate a “preferred champion” to present to the CFP committee. I think Bowlsby, naively, thought the committee would just keep TCU where it was.
The league’s social media arm has gotten much better since Yormark took over (ask him about social media impressions, and he’ll spend five minutes on it). But this is the first time in the Yormark era that the league decided to go toe-to-toe like this. They’ve done an improved job of promoting the league. But this is, well, different.
Yormark Steps Into the Ring
On Saturday, I was driving to East Texas to see family, so I missed most of the day’s coverage (congrats to Arizona State and Iowa State, by the way. See you in Arlington on Saturday). But in our Heartland text chain, a couple of our staff members noticed a change in ESPN’s talking points on the Big 12. One of our staffers said ESPN was in “repair mode.”
Shortly after the kickoff of the early games, our Pete Mundo exclusively reported why. Yormark did a little campaigning of his own with the Worldwide Leader.
Later in the day, Yormark got some in-game time to campaign for the league with Fox, which was broadcasting the Iowa State-Kansas State game. Fox’s announcers let him make his point.
And he wasn’t the only one. After Texas Tech dismantled West Virginia, Red Raiders coach Joey McGuire put the committee on blast on the conference’s behalf. It a wonderful “circle of life” moment, he used the “hypothetical” argument.
So, the real question is: will it make a difference? I’m not certain. I still think the Big 12 is a one-bid league. The SEC gets the benefit of the doubt because, let’s be honest — in the BCS/CFP era, the SEC has won 15 of the 26 national championship games. You win like that, and that’s the benefit you get. The worm doesn’t truly turn until the Big 12 starts making as much noise in the playoff as it did on the socials this week.
But, the Big 12 fought this week. It got its message out. It didn’t sit back and take it. And, the needle moved just a little bit. For a conference that has, for most of its history, been reactionary, a proactive approach to countering the disrespect was nice to see.
Someone, or Two, is Getting Left Out…
By the way, last week in this space, I noted that the average number of power conference teams that finish with ten or more wins going into the unveiling of the CFP bracket has been 13 in the past three years. Well, as of this weekend …
ACC: Two
Big 12: Three
Big Ten: Four
SEC: Three
Add Notre Dame, and you get 13.
This is why you campaign. Two teams are going home unhappy on Dec. 9. Yormark doesn’t want it to be his teams, and right now, one can’t leave any stone unturned.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
