or east coast teams for that matter.


Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi put Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby on the spot about UCF during his Friday guest appearance on Bianchi's radio show, 'Open Mike,' which airs from 6-9 a.m. on Orlando's 740 The Game.

During the 15-minute interview, Bianchi and UCF play-by-play voice Marc Daniels, who hosts the following show on 740, 'The Beat of Sports,' quizzed Bowlsby about the Big 12's place in the College Football Playoff, expansion, hosting a conference championship game with less than 12 teams and whether his league can keep up with the SEC and Big Ten in TV revenue.


Bowlsby repeated many of the same things he's said in the media since both Baylor and TCU were left out of the inaugural College Football Playoff. TCU, who lost to Baylor during the regular season, entered the final weekend ranked No. 3 by the committee but were leapfrogged by Florida State and Ohio State, the latter of which had an impressive 59-0 Big Ten championship game victory against Wisconsin. The Horned Frogs actually fell to sixth as Baylor - by virtue of their head-to-head victory - were deemed worthy of being placed a spot ahead.


UCF defeated Baylor 52-42 in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1, 2014, finishing the 2013 season ranked in the top 10.

The Big 12 had promoted the "One True Champion" slogan as they play a round-robin league schedule, but at the end of the day refused to distinguish a champion between 11-1 Baylor and TCU.

Playoff committee spokesman Jeff Long, the athletic director at Arkansas, acknowledged Ohio State's victory in the conference championship game was one of the reasons they were selected ahead of a Big 12 team.

Bowlsby repeated they would seek approval to stage a championship game with only 10 teams, but was unclear how they'd go about the process. In a recent story published by the San Diego Union-Tribune, former conference commissioners Wright Waters (Sun Belt) and Tom Hansen (PAC-12) scoffed at the notion other leagues would acquiesce when several leagues expanded in part to reach the 12-team threshold needed for holding a title game.

"Relative to the process, it's actually a great question right now because as you know the NCAA governance process has recently been restructured," Bowlsby said in the radio interview. "Previously, John Swofford and the ACC and I had asked the Board of Directors to consider deregulating the rules around conference playoff games... Relative to the rule, in the new day, it's not clear if the board can deal with that on a unilateral basis or whether it'll have to go into the governance structure through the NCAA council. We are asking those questions right now. We think that this is the kind of thing that could be handled in one form or another by next football season. But it isn't clear exactly where we access the system right now and at the January convention that's one of the things that we'll be working our way through."

Asked a question regarding what factors would most prominently be considered when it comes to expansion, Bowlsby reiterated expanding to 12 for the sake of holding a championship game is "not a well thought out strategy." If the time comes when they do consider expansion, he said things like "geography, electronic footprint and academic profile" would come into play but said for now his institutions prefer the "status quo" of a 10-team league. One reason for that is money.

"We divide the money 10 ways," Bowlsby said. "Right now, we're distributing the largest amount of money to each of our members in any league in college athletics. I don't know that our members are prepared to take a reduction in that distributable revenue. It's certainly about TV sets. It's certainly about recruiting. It's certainly about the possibility of competitive implications in all of our sports, but particularly our high-profile sports. At the present time we have no strategy. We haven't had any discussions around expansion. Our CEOs have said they like 10. I expect that we'll be at 10 for a while. Could that change down the road? Sure it could... I don't think we're going to take a kneejerk reaction and think immediately about expansion just because on this occasion we got left out of the playoff."

Daniels pointed out Big 12 per-team revenue could soon be dwarfed by the Big Ten and SEC by virtue of their conference television networks. In rebuttal, Bowlsby believes the Big 12 will see comparable revenue.

"Our distributable revenue projects being in the low to mid 40s (in millions) with our existing contract," Bowlsby said. "We have a good situation. Our contracts are slightly shorter than the ones in the SEC and the ones that will be in place in the Big Ten. That gives us a little bit of an advantage in terms of being able to go back to the marketplace. Certainly we have to look at those things. We want to look at the long horizon and as we do that, there are a variety of factors that come into play. The simple answer I think is yes, there's a lot of money in play. It's a significant factor. But there are also a lot of other factors that go into it."

Bowlsby then added if expansion was to be considered at some point, they'd likely look east and not west. Presumably, that would put schools like UCF, USF, Cincinnati, Memphis and UConn more in play and perhaps could rule out western candidates such as BYU and Boise State.

"We have one member in West Virginia that's on the East Coast," Bowlsby said. "We have to be mindful of their situation. If we took somebody in that was on the far West Coast it would certainly do a disservice to our member in West Virginia. As I mentioned earlier, it may be a different set of criteria to some of our members than it is to other members. As the commissioner, I certainly have to take all 10 institutions and their sensitivities into play."

At one point, Bianchi asked Bowlsby point-blank if UCF was "on the Big 12's radar," bringing up the university's second-largest enrollment and the victory against Big 12 champion Baylor in last year's Fiesta Bowl.

"We don't have any schools on our radar at the present time," Bowlsby said. "As you know, the Grant of Rights was noted earlier in the previous question. Our institutions all have granted their rights to the Big 12. Several other conferences have Grants of Rights. There are some institutions that are essentially off the table. We don't have any expansion initiative. We don't have any list of prospects. We don't have any plans to expand. As our athletic directors, our CEOs, talk about what the model looks like, talk about the challenges of the future and talk about the immediate past experience we had with the playoff, you know, those are things that are going to get discussed. But we don't have any list. We don't have any initiative. I would say that the status quo is by far the most attractive status to most of our members."

The literal quote is that adding any school on "the far west coast" would be doing current members a disservice. BYU is in the Mountain time zone, not the far west. Those words sound like they were picked specifically to keep BYU in the picture.

Having said that, the overall message is clear: the strong preference is for the status quo.

(12-19-2014 06:21 PM)OldGoldnBlue Wrote:  or east coast teams for that matter.


Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi put Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby on the spot about UCF during his Friday guest appearance on Bianchi's radio show, 'Open Mike,' which airs from 6-9 a.m. on Orlando's 740 The Game.

During the 15-minute interview, Bianchi and UCF play-by-play voice Marc Daniels, who hosts the following show on 740, 'The Beat of Sports,' quizzed Bowlsby about the Big 12's place in the College Football Playoff, expansion, hosting a conference championship game with less than 12 teams and whether his league can keep up with the SEC and Big Ten in TV revenue.


Bowlsby repeated many of the same things he's said in the media since both Baylor and TCU were left out of the inaugural College Football Playoff. TCU, who lost to Baylor during the regular season, entered the final weekend ranked No. 3 by the committee but were leapfrogged by Florida State and Ohio State, the latter of which had an impressive 59-0 Big Ten championship game victory against Wisconsin. The Horned Frogs actually fell to sixth as Baylor - by virtue of their head-to-head victory - were deemed worthy of being placed a spot ahead.


UCF defeated Baylor 52-42 in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1, 2014, finishing the 2013 season ranked in the top 10.

The Big 12 had promoted the "One True Champion" slogan as they play a round-robin league schedule, but at the end of the day refused to distinguish a champion between 11-1 Baylor and TCU.

Playoff committee spokesman Jeff Long, the athletic director at Arkansas, acknowledged Ohio State's victory in the conference championship game was one of the reasons they were selected ahead of a Big 12 team.

Bowlsby repeated they would seek approval to stage a championship game with only 10 teams, but was unclear how they'd go about the process. In a recent story published by the San Diego Union-Tribune, former conference commissioners Wright Waters (Sun Belt) and Tom Hansen (PAC-12) scoffed at the notion other leagues would acquiesce when several leagues expanded in part to reach the 12-team threshold needed for holding a title game.

"Relative to the process, it's actually a great question right now because as you know the NCAA governance process has recently been restructured," Bowlsby said in the radio interview. "Previously, John Swofford and the ACC and I had asked the Board of Directors to consider deregulating the rules around conference playoff games... Relative to the rule, in the new day, it's not clear if the board can deal with that on a unilateral basis or whether it'll have to go into the governance structure through the NCAA council. We are asking those questions right now. We think that this is the kind of thing that could be handled in one form or another by next football season. But it isn't clear exactly where we access the system right now and at the January convention that's one of the things that we'll be working our way through."

Asked a question regarding what factors would most prominently be considered when it comes to expansion, Bowlsby reiterated expanding to 12 for the sake of holding a championship game is "not a well thought out strategy." If the time comes when they do consider expansion, he said things like "geography, electronic footprint and academic profile" would come into play but said for now his institutions prefer the "status quo" of a 10-team league. One reason for that is money.

"We divide the money 10 ways," Bowlsby said. "Right now, we're distributing the largest amount of money to each of our members in any league in college athletics. I don't know that our members are prepared to take a reduction in that distributable revenue. It's certainly about TV sets. It's certainly about recruiting. It's certainly about the possibility of competitive implications in all of our sports, but particularly our high-profile sports. At the present time we have no strategy. We haven't had any discussions around expansion. Our CEOs have said they like 10. I expect that we'll be at 10 for a while. Could that change down the road? Sure it could... I don't think we're going to take a kneejerk reaction and think immediately about expansion just because on this occasion we got left out of the playoff."

Daniels pointed out Big 12 per-team revenue could soon be dwarfed by the Big Ten and SEC by virtue of their conference television networks. In rebuttal, Bowlsby believes the Big 12 will see comparable revenue.

"Our distributable revenue projects being in the low to mid 40s (in millions) with our existing contract," Bowlsby said. "We have a good situation. Our contracts are slightly shorter than the ones in the SEC and the ones that will be in place in the Big Ten. That gives us a little bit of an advantage in terms of being able to go back to the marketplace. Certainly we have to look at those things. We want to look at the long horizon and as we do that, there are a variety of factors that come into play. The simple answer I think is yes, there's a lot of money in play. It's a significant factor. But there are also a lot of other factors that go into it."

Bowlsby then added if expansion was to be considered at some point, they'd likely look east and not west. Presumably, that would put schools like UCF, USF, Cincinnati, Memphis and UConn more in play and perhaps could rule out western candidates such as BYU and Boise State.

"We have one member in West Virginia that's on the East Coast," Bowlsby said. "We have to be mindful of their situation. If we took somebody in that was on the far West Coast it would certainly do a disservice to our member in West Virginia. As I mentioned earlier, it may be a different set of criteria to some of our members than it is to other members. As the commissioner, I certainly have to take all 10 institutions and their sensitivities into play."

At one point, Bianchi asked Bowlsby point-blank if UCF was "on the Big 12's radar," bringing up the university's second-largest enrollment and the victory against Big 12 champion Baylor in last year's Fiesta Bowl.

"We don't have any schools on our radar at the present time," Bowlsby said. "As you know, the Grant of Rights was noted earlier in the previous question. Our institutions all have granted their rights to the Big 12. Several other conferences have Grants of Rights. There are some institutions that are essentially off the table. We don't have any expansion initiative. We don't have any list of prospects. We don't have any plans to expand. As our athletic directors, our CEOs, talk about what the model looks like, talk about the challenges of the future and talk about the immediate past experience we had with the playoff, you know, those are things that are going to get discussed. But we don't have any list. We don't have any initiative. I would say that the status quo is by far the most attractive status to most of our members."

15 minutes? This board has nixed Big 12 expansion in half that time.

(12-19-2014 06:40 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  The literal quote is that adding any school on "the far west coast" would be doing current members a disservice. BYU is in the Mountain time zone, not the far west. Those words sound like they were picked specifically to keep BYU in the picture.

Having said that, the overall message is clear: the strong preference is for the status quo.

disagree, he flatly states they will look east because of WVU

Totally expected.

If informal talks are going on anywhere, ambiguity/uncertainty is not a bad strategy, depending on agendas....also saying that they are expanding is not a good public position to take if they are trying to get a CCG with 10 members.

And certainly if they wanted to go west and wanted to extract concessions a good strategy would be to say going west is a tough go.

Still got my rose-colored glasses on.....until I hear official expansion candidates.

Message seems to be that they know they won't get a champ game for 10 teams, but will ask for a rule change just so they can argue they tried to get it.

The Big 12 may or may not expand. However, whatever Bowlsby or any other Big 12 rep says publicly will follow the party line of "We're happy where we are" no matter what might be happening. So, I can certainly buy the overall thought that the Big 12 won't expand at the end of the day, but Bowlsby has about as much credibility in his public statements as a North Korean dictator at this point.

(12-19-2014 07:18 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Message seems to be that they know they won't get a champ game for 10 teams, but will ask for a rule change just so they can argue they tried to get it.

That's been the case all along. The same can be said for the ACC which has had internal issues for quite some time concerning the make up of their divisions.

It doesn't take a genius though to do the math in order to figure out that they don't have a very good chance at achieving such a rule change.

The following needs emphasis:

Daniels pointed out Big 12 per-team revenue could soon be dwarfed by the Big Ten and SEC by virtue of their conference television networks. In rebuttal, Bowlsby believes the Big 12 will see comparable revenue.

"Our distributable revenue projects being in the low to mid 40s (in millions) with our existing contract," Bowlsby said. "We have a good situation. Our contracts are slightly shorter than the ones in the SEC and the ones that will be in place in the Big Ten. That gives us a little bit of an advantage in terms of being able to go back to the marketplace. Certainly we have to look at those things. We want to look at the long horizon and as we do that, there are a variety of factors that come into play. The simple answer I think is yes, there's a lot of money in play. It's a significant factor. But there are also a lot of other factors that go into it."

this is exactly what people say right before they expand!

What's said is it won't be until January until they governance model is decided.

From there a series of rules will be voted on once the governance model is selected. The championship game rule may not be up for vote for a whole another year.

Tulane and New Mexico as the #11 and #12 schools can wait another year.

(12-19-2014 07:47 PM)He1nousOne Wrote:  

(12-19-2014 07:18 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Message seems to be that they know they won't get a champ game for 10 teams, but will ask for a rule change just so they can argue they tried to get it.

That's been the case all along. The same can be said for the ACC which has had internal issues for quite some time concerning the make up of their divisions.

It doesn't take a genius though to do the math in order to figure out that they don't have a very good chance at achieving such a rule change.

Our divisions are just about perfect.

Sounds like he was ruling out SDSU very specifically, and possibly Boise St (w/that Far West) language.

Idiots. Complete idiots. When the GOR ends they will get picked apart.

(12-19-2014 09:58 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(12-19-2014 07:47 PM)He1nousOne Wrote:  

(12-19-2014 07:18 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Message seems to be that they know they won't get a champ game for 10 teams, but will ask for a rule change just so they can argue they tried to get it.

That's been the case all along. The same can be said for the ACC which has had internal issues for quite some time concerning the make up of their divisions.

It doesn't take a genius though to do the math in order to figure out that they don't have a very good chance at achieving such a rule change.

Our divisions are just about perfect.

In the sense that nobody can ever remember who's in what division--perfect incomprehensibility is a kind of perfection.

(Big East teams plus UVA in one division. Easy peasey.)

(12-19-2014 10:26 PM)jgkojak Wrote:  Sounds like he was ruling out SDSU very specifically, and possibly Boise St (w/that Far West) language.

Idiots. Complete idiots. When the GOR ends they will get picked apart.

I really don't know why you would call them idiots. While SDSU has a lot going for it, committing to a conference model that stretches from San Diego to Morgantown or potentially Connecticut would be breaking the mold. Boise doesn't fit for more reasons than just location though. They drew only 26,000 for their conference championship game that was played on their home field. That doesn't scream big time football to me no matter how good their teams may have been in their brief history.

Ultimately, should they decide to expand at some time in the future, there are more attractive candidates to the east. Choosing anyone to the east of the majority of their current members would help alleviate the problem of West Virginia being on such an island. Moving west, especially with schools in California, only creates the same problem in another direction.

(12-19-2014 07:45 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  The Big 12 may or may not expand. However, whatever Bowlsby or any other Big 12 rep says publicly will follow the party line of "We're happy where we are" no matter what might be happening. So, I can certainly buy the overall thought that the Big 12 won't expand at the end of the day, but Bowlsby has about as much credibility in his public statements as a North Korean dictator at this point.

Frank,

How far off is my logic. The Big 12 can follow one of three scenarios. First they can stand pat without a championship game. Second, they can possibly have rules changed and have the game with 10 teams, and third, they can have a championship game after expansion.

It appears to me that a championship game is profitable for a myriad of reason that include monetary and the strengthening of the conference for playoff purposes. I would think this points to the latter two scenarios. Therefore, if the rule change passes, the Big 12 holds a championship game with 10, if it does not the Big 12 will expand.

(12-20-2014 01:06 AM)Zombiewoof Wrote:  I really don't know why you would call them idiots. While SDSU has a lot going for it, committing to a conference model that stretches from San Diego to Morgantown or potentially Connecticut would be breaking the mold.

Its not just breaking the mold ... its also harder on the school or schools at the eastern edge than the school or schools at the western edge, because of what time it is by the time you get back from a game played on the other edge of the conference.

(12-19-2014 09:58 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(12-19-2014 07:47 PM)He1nousOne Wrote:  

(12-19-2014 07:18 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Message seems to be that they know they won't get a champ game for 10 teams, but will ask for a rule change just so they can argue they tried to get it.

That's been the case all along. The same can be said for the ACC which has had internal issues for quite some time concerning the make up of their divisions.

It doesn't take a genius though to do the math in order to figure out that they don't have a very good chance at achieving such a rule change.

Our divisions are just about perfect.

No they aren't

B12 is unlikely to expand until current TV deal is near an end. When and if they expand it will be towards the East. Outside of that he says nothing noteworthy.