Randy Peterson
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July 10, 2025
Let’s start off by applauding Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark for “doubling down” on the 5+11 plan for the college football playoffs. Five automatic spots for the top five conference champions. Eleven at-large teams. He even told Big 12 reporters Tuesday that the ACC commissioner was on board with the concept, too.
Yormark and Jim Phillips against college football world. A Big 12-ACC alliance.
Cool. Bring it on.
Boom. Shots fired.
Now let’s see what the SEC and Big Ten guys have to counter during their annual summer media days – July 14-17 for the SEC, and July 22-24 for the Big Ten.
The bully, also known as the SEC, wants four automatic qualifiers. Their Big Ten follower agreed (shocker).
May the best plan prevail for the 2026 College Football Playoffs.
What the Big 12 really needs, beyond the sights and sounds of this never-ending College Football Playoff drama, however, is to “just win, baby.”
As Yormark talked about his conference being “the deepest college football conference in America,” during his opening remarks, I wondered if he’d ever get around to saying the obvious:
That as top-to-bottom balanced as the conference is – the national perception is that it’s just not very good.
He may be right. I mean, former Big 12er Texas is one of top two or three teams in the nation right now. Oklahoma, another team that abandoned the conference in which it resided since 1996 and contended nationally many of those years – also took its stuff elsewhere.
Which leaves the Big 12 without a signature football program. Which leads to a national perception that “we just ain’t that good.” All of which adds up to the college football playoff committee possibly buying it – and that’s where we find ourselves today.
Mr. Commish threw out a statistic I didn’t know anyone even kept – that last season, “the Big 12 led the nation in fourth-quarter lead changes and go-ahead scores in the final minute of conference games.”
Great, and so is the parity of four teams sharing first-place 7-2 records, but . . .
As far as national perception, this conference could use a couple truly dominating teams. Yormark even said it. Writers and podders jumped on it within hours, and in this instance, they were right.
The Big 12 must have a showcase program to receive the national respect it feels it deserves.
“I think parity matters and I think ultimately over time, and it's hopefully sooner than later, there'll be a couple of our schools that will emerge,” he told reporters.
Elite schools . . . are always part of the conversations at the highest levels, and that's what we're working towards.
“But it starts with parity and being competitive top to bottom. I think we're there . . . but I do believe that long- term, you need certain schools to emerge to the top.”
Could that be defending Big 12 championship game Arizona State? Or how about title game runner-up Iowa State? Or money-bags Texas Tech. Or Kansas State. Or BYU. Or Utah? (The big money, and I mean big, is on Texas Tech.)
It starts with beating big-brand non-conference opponents, as I wrote a while back. It starts with Cincinnati beating Nebraska, Colorado beating Georgia Tech, Baylor beating Auburn and then SMU, TCU beating North Carolina, Iowa State winning at home against Iowa, Arizona State winning at Mississippi State and BYU defending its home field against Stanford.
That’s where it starts. Beat well-known foes, and then beat the snot out of the “buy” opponents most teams have.
Do that, then sit back and then cross fingers that enough of the CFP committee members noticed.
(Columnist Randy Peterson, a multiple State of Iowa Sportswriter of the Year winner, can be reached at randypete4846@gmail.com or at any Okoboji-area beverage/food establishment between the hours of open and close.)