Opinion: The Big 12 is Officially Dead (Why The Conference Needs to End)

After the latest College Football Playoff Rankings were released one thing became even more incredibly obvious....

The Big 12 is Dead.

Oklahoma State jumps to 8, even with what is arguably the most impressive win of the season. Everyone is talking about how Iowa still has a chance should it win out and beat Ohio State. Two 1-Loss teams (Notre Dame and Alabama) are locked in. Assuming Clemson, Bama, Ohio State, and Notre Dame win out, I see very little if any chance of a Big 12 team making the College Football Playoff. This would mark the second year in a row that the Big 12 would be shut out.

Then we heard playoff committee representative Jeff Long make numerous silly statements covering up the issues of teams not in the Big 12.

On Stanford Playing a Game that Would Be at 9:00am Pacific Time if They Were Home

Absolutely. We discussed that. We discussed a lot of things in that committee room. Remembering we are spending two days in there. And yeah, I think its a significant thing. Now, every committee member would weight that differently, but I think  it is worth noting that they play at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time

On Iowa Jumping to Number 5

"Five through eight was where we spent the majority of our time debating and discussing and voting. Iowa for us, for the committee, they’ve shown consistent improvement. They’ve shown consistency on both sides of the ball. While they’ve not been flashy, they have been solid on both sides of the ball.

"They’ve got a couple of road victories in the Big Ten that are impressive and they have the overall strength of schedule of the undefeated teams other than Clemson, the No. 1 team. That’s what helped propel Iowa above the others in the 5-8 range."

On Ohio State Getting the Benefit of the Doubt

"We watched (Ohio State) play, we analyzed them, we think they have incredible talent," Long said. "We think they're a team that probably hasn't played its best yet. We think their best games are in front of them. ... They've got some strong, dominating players that impact a game."

What we have here is plain and simple. The College Football Playoff Committee has ZERO respect for the Big 12 conference. They go out of their way to use jet lag, road victories in the Big Ten (seriously), and Ohio State gets its position from the eyeball test, not based on who they've played.

Should this trend continue, the Big 12 will likely find itself once again on the outside looking in. Sadly because of perception and prestige, the Big 12's best chance might be for the Sooners to run the table and continue to decimate teams along the way.

All of this points to another nail in the coffin for a conference that is already on life support at best. The Kansas States and Iowa States of the world are probably perfectly content staying in the conference. West Virginia seems to be quite content as well. But the reality is that the perception of the Big 12 is that they are a notch below the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, and Pac 12.

What would it take to get the Big 12 to finally give up the ghost? Could consecutive years getting shutout of the playoff be the final straw?

We Can Only Hope So.