Baylor head coach Art Briles fought vigorously and valiantly to win that oh-so-coveted fourth spot on the College Football Playoff seed line, and he hasn’t gotten much support within the league.
In fact, he hasn’t gotten any.
First there was this note, which came out after the Coaches’ Poll revealed its end-of-year ballots.Intriguing to see Big 12 coaches weigh in on the Baylor/TCU talk. Stoops, Strong, Patterson and Gundy all had TCU two spots ahead of BU.
— David Ubben (@davidubben) December 8, 2014
That’s either a shot at Baylor as a team, Briles himself, or both.
Then Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby went on the Dan Patrick Show and said he’d vote TCU ahead of Baylor if he had one.
And, finally, Kansas athletics director Sheahon Zenger spoke to Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com and basically said, “Um, Art, you asked for this.”
“This was discussed yesterday with a few of us on the phone,” Zenger said. “What’s getting overlooked is -- and people talk about our commissioner -- our football coaches distinctly said several years ago, this is how we want it.
"[Bowlsby] was carrying out the will of the people. For kids, you want to give out as many championship opportunities as possible. Maybe five or six months from now when there’s only one team standing, this may fade in people’s memories a little bit.”
Wanting to hand out as many championship rings as possible for the kids is a nice way to look at it. But a more cynical, and perhaps more realistic, viewpoint is that coaches and ADs realized crowning two or three co-champions increased their chances of receiving conference championship bonuses by two or three times.
Big 12 ADs met Monday in New York surrounding a National Football Foundation event, and supposedly everything was on the table. In fact, they were meeting at the very moment Zenger was in Lawrence speaking with reporters after new head coach David Beaty‘s introductory press conference. “It’s something we’re discussing right now while I’m here with you and it’s something we will discuss,” Zenger said of the possibility that the CFP will force the Big 12 to reinstitute a championship game.
“We all hurt from that,” he added. “You watch two teams that I think earned the right to play for the national championship. Going into this process … somebody is going to get left out. It’s unfortunate we have No. 5 and 6.