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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;NEW YORK \u2014 Bob Bowlsby smiled a lot bigger Wednesday than he did this week last year. The Big 12 commissioner certainly seemed happier as he addressed the crowd at the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum. \u201CI was in a patently unhappy place last year,\u201D Bowlsby said, \u201Cso it\u2019s a relatively low bar.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A year ago, Bowlsby had to explain to his league\u2019s presidents, athletic directors and fans why the league was left out of the inaugural College Football Playoff. He got plenty of suggestions about what the Big 12 should do in the wake of the slight. &lt;em&gt;Declare one champion. Play a championship game. Expand to 12. Expand to 14.&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;\u2022&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;STAPLES: Alabama's Heisman finalist Derrick Henry has maximum impact&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What did Bowlsby do? He advised his schools not to do anything drastic. He encouraged the presidents and ADs to wait for more data, and to let the playoff selection committee set the field a few more times to establish patterns of behavior before making significant changes. All his schools changed prior to this season was introducing a simple solution to a ridiculous problem. In May, the league installed a tiebreaker that would firmly declare a champion. This week, the Big 12 passed something known informally as the \u201CBaylor Rule,\u201D which requires each team to play at least one Power Five opponent from another conference per year.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This season, the Big 12 has a team in the playoff. Oklahoma (11\u20131) is the No. 4 seed, and because the Sooners\u2019 season ended a week earlier than the champions of the other Power Five leagues, the Big 12 was able to sit back and watch the other conferences struggle to claim the other three spots. Yet Bowlsby, who weathered the storm last year with minimal complaints about the process he and the other commissioners created, keeps getting suggestions.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One came from Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott. \u201CI\u2019d like to see more consistency [between conferences] rather than less,\u201D Scott told CBSSports.com's Jon Solomon. \u201CI\u2019d like to see the Big 12 go to a championship game. I don't think it's good or fair to see a conference not have to win that extra game and have that extra opportunity both for a win and a loss. I don't like the idea that a champion can be in the clubhouse and not put it on the line when, in this case, there are strong teams in other conferences that if they lose can be out of the playoff.\u201D It should be noted that this season, it was the Pac-12\u2019s turn to sit out the playoff.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany wants the Big 12 to add divisions if it wants to stage a championship game. The Big 12 and ACC have a proposal in the pipeline to eliminate the rule that requires conferences to have at least 12 members to stage a title game. That proposal will be voted on at the NCAA Convention in January. But the Big Ten added an amendment that any league playing a championship game would have to split into divisions.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bowlsby appreciates his colleagues\u2019 concern about his conference\u2019s affairs, but he still isn\u2019t ready to recommend any radical changes. \u201CI\u2019m used to getting lots of unsolicited advice,\u201D Bowlsby said.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since everyone is telling the Big 12 what to do, here\u2019s one more suggestion.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don\u2019t make any changes besides the minor one Bowlsby is currently kicking around. Stay at 10 schools. Keep playing that nine-game true round-robin schedule. Let your conference freak flag fly.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the best things about college football is its aversion to homogeneity. Some leagues play eight conference games. Some play nine. Some play championship games. The Big 12 did, but now it doesn\u2019t. (The Big 12, you\u2019ll recall, eliminated its title game after it dropped from 12 to 10 members after the Pac-12, Big Ten and SEC tried to pick it clean during realignment and toss the bones into the Group of Five conferences.) These differences start a lot of arguments, most of which make the sport even more fun to follow.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If all the leagues were the same size and determined their champions the same way, they might as well be NFL divisions. Arguing about that would be no fun at all.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the Pac-10 became the Pac-12, no one made it play a nine-game conference schedule with a title game. It chose that, just as the SEC chooses to play eight league games with a championship. The Big 12 chooses to have 10 teams and play a format that eliminates the possibility of a program winning because of a lucky scheduling draw. And despite what some people thought after 11\u20131 Baylor and TCU were left out of the playoff field in \u201914, that won\u2019t preclude the conference from making the playoff. \u201CThere was a lot of soul searching [last year],\u201D Bowlsby said. \u201CBut I was very proud of our athletic directors that they didn\u2019t take any knee-jerk reactions.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BBowlsby and the Big 12 ADs now have two years of committee behavior to study, but nothing has happened that would force the league to expand or to bring back its championship game (presuming the rule is eliminated in January). \u201CWe need to continue to watch the landscape,\u201D Bowlsby said. \u201CWe\u2019re a little smaller. We don\u2019t have a championship game. We do have a round robin. You\u2019ve got to keep asking yourself if you want to be different in three or four significant ways. There may come a time when we don\u2019t, but we want to see the pieces of the puzzle before we make those decisions.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The one potential change they can make with relative ease is adjusting the league schedule so all 10 teams play on the final Saturday of the season. Had Oklahoma played Oklahoma State on Dec. 5 instead of on Nov. 28, the Sooners might have been seeded higher and Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield might have gotten more Heisman Trophy votes. \u201CIf we end up not having a championship game,\u201D Bowlsby said, \u201Cwe don\u2019t want to be dark on that last weekend.\u201D That change can be made for the 2017 season, because that schedule hasn\u2019t been made. It\u2019s also likely the Big 12 champion will play\u2014or be crowned\u2014on the final Saturday in \u201916. Six teams, including Baylor, TCU and both Oklahoma schools, play on Dec. 3.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That should help the league deal with potential recency bias. As for the famous 13th data point, there is no guarantee having a championship game would help a Big 12 team make the playoff. The committee hasn\u2019t selected teams for the playoff enough years to establish a trend, so it makes little sense to push radical changes absent data that radical changes would address. The Big 12 didn\u2019t make the field last year. It did this year. This predicament, Bowlsby said, may be a function of the format commissioners chose rather than a disadvantage based on the Big 12\u2019s structure. \u201CWe have five autonomy conferences,\u201D he said, \u201Cand only four slots.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;\u2022&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SCHNELL: Is there anything that Stanford's Christian McCaffrey can't do?&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unlike Scott, who started suggesting what other conferences should do when his got left out, Bowlsby never said leagues should be more like the Big 12 when he found himself in the same position last year. There is only one league like the Big 12, and it may not need to change to thrive in the playoff era. We won\u2019t know until the committee has seeded the field a few more times. Scott may think the Big 12 needs a title game, but part of the beauty of college football is one commissioner doesn\u2019t necessarily have to care what another thinks.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a big deal,\u201D Bowlsby said. \u201CThe question is: Is it a disadvantage we\u2019re willing to live with?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/college-football/2015/12/09/big-12-bob-bowlsby-college-football-playoff>