10 Bold Fixes for the Big 12: What College Football Needs Next

10 changes college football fans would love to see in the Big 12—ranging from scheduling tweaks and playoff expansion ideas to officiating reforms and media coverage improvements. This fan-first wishlist is a direct response to recent remarks made by West Virginia Athletic Director Wren Baker, who said the sport needs to evolve with fan interests at the center. We break down each idea and debate which are realistic, which are long overdue, and which would shake up the conference in the best ways possible.

Keywords:
Big 12 football, college football changes, Wren Baker comments, West Virginia AD, Big 12 scheduling, playoff expansion, Big 12 fan opinions, college football reforms, Big 12 podcast, First and XII

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Transcript

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Let's make sports fun again. It's a crazy concept yet. I feel like it's not being talked about enough. At least until last week, we're going to talk about who said that and why it was important on today's show. From all home estate to Colorado, Arizona State to Cincinnati, we've got big 12 covered from end zone to buzzer reader. This is First and First. You're all access passed to all 16 teams, all in every episode.(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to another episode of First and 12. I'm your host Adam Gibby. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really do appreciate it. If you could leave a five star review, leave a comment. Again, touch with the show at First and 12 on X. I would love to hear your commentary and get your thoughts and analysis on what is going on around the Big 12, both in College Football, College Basketball, and any other Olympic sport. So last week, Ren Baker, who is the athletic director for West Virginia, said something that is just too obvious. It was just too common sense, and yet we're not talking about it enough. If you've been paying attention to this show or anything going around the landscape of College Football, you know that the College Football Playoff is an area that is getting talked a lot about, particularly with the new proposed models. There are a bunch of models out there. There's the 4422, which seems to be kind of going away. It was very popular a couple weeks ago, not so much anymore. The 5 plus 11 models out there. If you want to hear about any of these models, you can look them up on my other episodes. I go into extensive explanation on what each one is, whether it's good for the Big 12 or not, and whether or not it could be sustainable for College Football in general. If you want to do that, check out my other episodes. Just type in First and 12, College Football Playoff, and you will see probably three or four episodes where I go very in-depth on that subject. So, Ren Baker, he is on a podcast called "Three Guys For The Game," and he wanted to talk about the different playoff models. He personally prefers the 5 plus 11 model. When asked about it, kind of, a prod about it a little bit, he said the following. Some people look at it and say, "You guys are idiots. You have a guarantee to yourself two spots. This is the 4422 model." And you might have four many more years. I just think one, America doesn't want that. It's not fair. To me, it just goes against everything that sports is about. I think you have to earn it on the field. I just think that when you look at the totality of it, a 4422 should be a non-starter for the Big 12 and the ACC. He just said it right there. It's obvious America doesn't want that. At some point, the fans need to pull back the support a little bit and say, "Hey, we a matter. If we don't watch, guess what? Your TV revenue deals, your interest, all this money coming in. It's not going to be there anymore of the fan stop watching." And he's basically saying, "Look, fans don't want to see that. They don't want to see this automatic qualifying system. Who's to say that in 2028? We're going to have the same landscape as 2025. Who's to say the Big 10 deserves four bids and five years? Just because they might deserve it this year." And he's got an absolute true point there. I mean, you look at any other sport, the NBA, the NFL, MLB, College Basketball, College Any Other Sport. There's no automatic qualifiers. Correction, sometimes there's one qualifier. So you win your conference championship, you get to go to the Big Dance. And that's fine. I think that's good. You get representation from the entire country. That is perfectly fine. But you don't see other sports. You don't see other conferences, other leagues say, this conference gets this many bids and this conference only gets this many bids and this one only gets this many. You don't see that now. Does it naturally work itself out that way? Of course, you're never going to see the Ohio Valley conference in basketball get nine bids while the SEC gets two bids. It's not going to happen. But there's nothing in writing that says it can't happen. And I think that's really important. I think it's important that we look back, college sports and say, you know what? Let's make sports fun again. Let's do things the way we want to do them because we're the fans. We're the reason you're getting all this money. You're the, we're the reason that all these TV revenues and all this conference realignment is happening. So let's bring back the reins. Let's hold back the reins and say, hey, these are changes that we want to see. Never mind your money. Never mind your TV ratings or whatever because you keep going in this direction. You're going to lose the common fan. If the big 12 and ACC mountain West, pack 12, all those conferences dropped to essentially the FCS level because the SEC and big 10 decide to market off their own thing. You're going to lose tens of millions of fans, tens of millions of fans. The whole entire Midwest will essentially not have a favorite team anymore. Who are Candace fans going to go support Ohio State? I mean, come on. They want to support Candace or Candace State. Fans in Utah want to support BYU or Utah. They don't want us to be supporting UCLA or USC. We'll have to go all the way to Oregon to find the closest team. I mean, it's just ridiculous. So I thought it'd be fun kind of in the same idea as Ren Baker to come up with 10 different changes to college football that America wants to see. Now, do 100% of the people want to see this? No, I'm not saying that. But probably 95% do. These are things that I feel like most people would get behind and say, yeah, let's do that because we want to see it as fans of the game. Now, the first one is transparency. How much money are players making in NIL? How much money are players making with revenue sharing? We want to see that. If we're going to be donor, so if we're going to be paying higher ticket prices to go to these games so that these schools can cover their revenue shares and players can get their NIL, why can't we know what their contracts are? It makes absolutely zero sense. I don't know why it's viewed as a bad thing that we don't know how much the quarterback makes, how much the running back makes. Why is that a big thing? I feel like if we have this transparency, teams would be able to also potentially, I know it's fans of sports and there's not a lot of logic, but you know, you can potentially understand why certain players may leave for other schools when you see, okay, this player at my school can only make 1.2 million. If they go to this school, they're going to make 3 million. Okay, that makes sense. Then you can kind of at least internalize why that's happening instead of just being frustrated throwing your arms up and saying, why is everybody leaving? And then you get at this is dumb, what's going on? So number one is transparency. Number two is we need to have the equal amount of conference games between leagues. Right now, the ACC and the SEC only play eight conference games. The big 10, the big 12, and basically every other conference plays nine conference games. That needs to change. We need to be on the same page. Personally, I would like to see eight games, but I'm okay with a nine if it means we're all on the same level. It is absolutely ridiculous for me that an SEC school can schedule four cupcakes and then just have to go two and six and link and make a bowl game. That is ridiculous. I don't think it's fair. I don't think it's right. I think if they get to do it, I think every other conference should get to do it. And I think that's the way we should be going for it. I don't think it needed a lot more explanation on this, but everybody goes to eight or everybody goes to nine. If you want to hear more analysis on that, I've explained that as well in another episode where I went into how I would like to see a schedule format, not going to get into it on this episode though. Number three, it's better overtime rules. Right now, the overtime rules are ridiculous. It was, I want to give credit to the NCAA or College football whoever came up with it. The idea of the two-point conversion was a really smart idea. It was a good idea to throw something out there, but it's dumb. I don't like it. I don't think it's fair. I don't think it's the best way to decide a game because you're putting too much emphasis on how good a team's offense of goal line is against another team's defensive goal line defense. If you are a pass heavy offense, you're going to really struggle in the two-point conversion battle because you have 12 yards based on how to find a pass when you have 11 defenders that are as well. If you are a defense that relies heavily on stopping the run, you're also going to really struggle because most teams aren't going to just run up the middle kind of thing. I think what you should do is instead of starting over time at the 25 or 30 yard line, whatever it is, already in the field goal range, by the way, start at the 50 yard line. And for the first two over times, have it at the 50 yard line. And when you score, you have to go for two. There's no kicking a field goal for the first two over times, whatever. No, you got to go for two. As it is, I don't think you're going to make it past the first over time that often. You'll very rarely make it past the second over time. And if you do, then what you do is you go back to the 50 yard line, you say, "Okay, it's first and 20." And then if you make it to a fourth over time, okay, now it's first and 25. You're not going to make it very far because now when it's first and 20, you're going to get a lot more passes that are going downfield. That means tipped balls, that means in completions, that means interceptions, whatever it is, sacs, you're going to get a lot more chaos in that first and 20 play. Because if you don't get at least eight, nine yards on that first play, now you're looking at second and 20, second and 16, and now you're kind of in that scary mode. And because you're at the 50 yard line, you're not in field goal range yet. You have to get that first, first down to even have a real chance to get a field goal. So that would be the changes I would see. I think it would be super fun. I think fans would love it. It would extend the games a little bit and make it less of a shootout where let's just be honest. You could be the best team in the world. But if it's not a good matchup on a goal line scenario, it isn't about who's the better team. It's about who's the better goal line team in. Nobody wants to see that. It's like soccer. Nobody wants to see the penalty shootout. I don't know. Maybe people do, but I think it's stupid. Why is it goalie versus one player? What I would do is say, "Okay, we're starting over time. Everybody take off one player." Then after five minutes, "Okay, take off another player." So then it becomes nine on nine. Five more minutes, take off another player. Until you get to the point where it's four on four, then you're going to score a goal really quick. Kind of thing. I mean, you see it in hockey. You get the penalty. Just taking out defenders, taking out players on a power play, even if both teams are playing on power play. It leads to more goals because there's just more space for chaos to happen. And I think that that would kind of be the same thing, called triple, I think, by extending out the game and having to start at the 50th yard line, then we would just get a lot more chaos. And you wouldn't make it to that second third overtime. And if you did, guess what? People love football. We only get 12 games a year. Why are we saying, "Oh, well, we're going to cut down on the amount of game time and go to a penalty shootout?" No, just play football. It's a beautiful game. Let it play out the way it's supposed to. Number three, starting number four, fix the kickoff rules. Easy enough. Just go to the UFL model. Go to the NFL model. Make it so that the kicker kicks it further back. There's a landing zone, the receiving team and the defending team are five yards apart when the kick takes place. And just like chaos happened. There are teams this year that I would watch where if I knew there was a three-minute timeout, TV timeout, I would give myself five minutes because I know that team is just going to take a touchback because that's what they do or maybe they always kick touchbacks because that's just what they do. Don't take out the most fun play in college football. In my opinion, the two most fun plays are kickoff returns and really long punt returns. There's a really long punt. There's a lot of space. The guy can make a few guys miss. Now he's in the open field. We'll see what happens. Kickoff returns. Same thing. You got a guy catching the ball. There's nobody within 20 yards of him. Let him see what he can do. Let's not take that part of the game away. Let's make it more prevalent. So change the rules. Don't force kickoffs but basically make them very incentivized. Number five. Let's have less replay reviews. Okay. This has gotten out of hand. There's a game going on. A team has momentum. They're making a run or maybe a team is playing great defense about to get a big stop. We need to go to review five minutes later. Oh, the play on the field. It stands. The call on the play stands. Okay. Nothing happened. Well, now the momentum's gone. People are less excited. The energy and the stadiums kind of gone down. Get rid of the replays. What I would do. And this is something similar to what basketball has recently done. You can only review the play if it's a coach's challenge. The coaches only get one challenge per half. If they're successful, they get a second. But then that's it. Okay. So if you get two successful challenges, you don't get a third. This would force coaches first off to be very selective and when they want to use that first challenge because they probably don't want to do it in the first two minutes of the game. Knowing that even if successful, they now only have one challenge for the remaining 28 minutes of the half. They're not going to want to do that. And so it's going to force coaches to be very intentional with about their doing. The exceptions to this would be targeting that would probably be it. Or anything, you know, anything involved in a fight or you need to kind of decide, okay, which players need to be kicked out, which ones continue to get to be able to play and stuff. But besides that, coaches challenge those are the only reviews. And you just go from there. I think that would speed up the game. I think it would make the game much more entertaining. And then also have a cap on it. Like you get 90 seconds to decide what a play is. If you can't determine 90 seconds, then the play stands. Like it shouldn't take you two minutes to confirm something or overturn something. Because if it's taking that long, then that obviously means that there's still questions. If there's questions, you got to, you know, uphold the call. Number six, this one would be, I don't know if this is one. This is the one where maybe fans would disagree with me on is more field access. I love the UFL because of the field access. There's interviews with the coaches. There's interviews with the players after big touchdowns or an interception. Or just a big play. There is, you can hear play calls. You can hear conversations within the ref circle. You know, when they're discussing a penalty, you can hear what they're saying. When they go to Mike Pereira or whoever's in the replay studio, you can hear the conversation. Okay, he's looking at this. This is what they're looking at. This is the camera angle they're looking at. It's just so much access. It's so fun to watch. I personally love it. I'm not sure if other people do. Other people might just enjoy the traditional broadcast of, not having to really hear what's going on just being able to watch. But personally, I would love the field access. Number seven, you cannot opt out of bull games. You can't do it. It is so mind-boggling to me that it's acceptable for a team member to play an entire season, get to a bull game, which is the goal. I realize the ultimate goal is the national championship. But guess what? There's only 12 teams left. That means that there's 124 teams that don't. So your goal is to make it to the bull game. You have more exposure in the bull game. Nobody is watching Akron football during the regular season. But when the Bahamas bull comes on, there's hundreds of thousands of people that tune in. This is your opportunity to showcase your skills. And yet, opting out has become so common. I remember watching two games last year, back to back, major, major bull games. So it was the pop charts. Between Iowa State and Miami, where Cam Ward, the quarterback for Miami, decided to opt out after the second half. It was a great game. The first half of Miami had maybe a two score lead. It's like a ten-point game or something going into halftime. Cam Ward opted out of the second half. Iowa State came back one of the game. Now, I was happy as a big 12 fan to see Iowa State have that comeback. But it really did dilute the game and it left a lot of what ifs. You know, would the same thing have happened if they had played their starters the whole game? I don't know. I mean, I think Miami probably ends up winning that game. But we don't will never know. And unfortunately, because somebody players opted out, there's just going to be questions. Right after that game, BYU can call a rattle play. And now this was a game between two squads that were in the same conference. If there was a game to opt out of, it was this game. But Bull team has decided we're going to play this game. Travis Hunter, who's one that hides in the trophy, he played or Sanders, who was. Expected to go in the early first round in the NFL draft. He started all BYU's guys started and it was a great game. Now, I realize it was a lopsided game for BYU. They won convincingly. But there was so much intrigue before the game. And it was the highest viewed non-playoff game of the entire college football bull season. By far, by like millions. And I think it was a big part of us because there were not opt outs. If you sign an NIL deal, if you are a part of a revenue share, you are an employee or you are contractually, you need to be contractually obligated to finish out your season. The one exception to this would be if the players injured. And when I say injured, I mean able to play but still injured. And I realize that creates a great area. But what I mean by that is let's say TCU is running back, missed the final three games of the season. He is technically able to play for the bull game, but won't be at 100%. In that case, yeah, sit out, it's fine. But this whole like, oh, pinky soreness. No, you need to be playing the game. You've been playing all season, you need to play the game. Just to opt you now just because don't do that either. I think the other exception potentially, and I'll kind of get to this more on the next one, which is actually transfer portal. Actually, I'll just get to that right now. Transfer portal incentives and penalties is number eight. So I think the transfer portal is fine. I think it should be legal. I think it should be used. I think it's a great resource for players to have who fill and need to transfer. But I think there needs to be some restrictions or guard rails around it. Number one, you only get one transfer. You can only transfer one time, and that's it. You want transfer after your freshman season. Great. Go. Now you're there for three years. You want transfer for your senior year or grad student. Fantastic. Go do that. The only exception to that would be if you coach leaves because I do understand that if you aren't wanting to play for a coach or for a certain scheme, then you should be able to play for that coach or scheme. The other exception, and this would be a very specific case, is if a offense or defensive coordinator leaves, but you have to follow that coach. So the offensive coordinator for Oklahoma State goes to Baylor. Well, then a player on the offense can then transfer to Baylor, even if they've already had that one transfer, because they're playing for that same coach, that same scheme that they wanted to play for. They can't just go off to Iowa State or to USC or Notre Dame, whatever. They have to stay at Oklahoma State or follow that specific offensive coordinator. Whether it's coach, you can go anywhere because that's going to be a complete scheme change and everything. Now, understand there's legalities of this, but also at the same time, NIL deals, they need to be incentivized. So you get a four year contract, you get 10% after your freshman year, then you get a 20% share after your sophomore year, you get a 30% share after your junior year, and then your senior year, you get the 40%. That would come out to 100% as going to incentivize those players to stay the entire time because every year they're going to get a little bit more. And I think it's just going to be better for the game. I miss the days and I think a lot of fans, and again, this is a list of what fans want to see. This is what you the fan want to see to make your experience of a college football game better. Fans want to see the freshman quarterback who comes onto the team and doesn't play at all as freshman year. His sophomore year, he gets some reps in garbage time or whatever, and then maybe at the end of the year, there's an injury he gets to play in the bowl game. And then he comes back as junior year, the starter after after a tough quarterback battle, wins it as a starter plays as a junior has his ups and downs. But then as a senior, he's a great player, all American leading the team to the college football play. That's what fans miss. That's what fans desire to watch. And I realize the transfer portal is going to be a thing. I realize that for some players, it is in their best interest and I support that. But let's get some more of those stories of players who start somewhere, stay there and their careers there. I watched the BYU and I also watched the Arizona senior night ceremonies. And both of them, I think had a combined four or five players who had started there at the university, most of transferred in at some point. And it's, I get it, it's the reality of it. But again, this is a list of what fans want. Fans want those stories. They don't necessarily want the, oh, this player, this is their fourth school in five years kind of thing. Number nine, kickoff times that start on television. Now unless you're in the big noon kickoff slot. So you're the first game of the day, whether you know, whatever channel that is Foxy is PN ABC, whatever, you probably aren't watching that you're opening kickoff of your game. And that's because these TV markets or these TV stations have decided that college football game should only last three hours and 30 minutes. Well, normally they go a little bit over that. And so when the game switches to the second game of the day at the 230 spot, the, or the 330 spot, start. And then, by the next spot, so the six clock spot, well, now you've missed the first five minutes of the game. And then by the time you get to the nine clock slot or the 930 slot, you're missing seven or eight minutes. Where the coverage was start and the score was already like 10 to three. You're like, oh, well, I wonder what happened there. And so you have to get on the X or or on Facebook, whatever and kind of catch up through highlights and what people are seeing. So just move games back. Okay, I understand nobody wants to start a football game at 950 at night. Just start at 950. And if I'm, if I'm start, if I'm staying up till 930 for the start of my game, I will stay up till 950 for the start of the game. What I don't want is to be ready at 930 with my, you know, with my food, my popcorn, whatever it is. And then be sitting watching the end of a 42 to seven blow out between Pittsburgh and Boston college. Okay. I don't want to see that knowing that my game is going on. So end the game and then start the next game. Understand there's technicalities where they could get kind of weird with over time, especially go to like double and triple over time. But just let us watch the games. You know, that's what fans want. That's what we're tuning in for. If we need to move the games back a little bit further, that's fine. Nobody in the stands. Like I understand people in the stands, they want the game start on time because they're there for that. But that's what 50, 60,000 people when you have oftentimes well over a million people at home watching wanting to watch the start of that game. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the next game is going to be a lot of changes. And then the last football, but fine, whatever. Same thing with the overtime rules that I was talking about. We're going to go to a two point conversion shootout because it'll speed up the game. Okay, fine, whatever. I don't like it, but whatever. We're saving time. Okay, we're saving time. And then last year, college football announces, hey, we're going to have a two minute time out after, you know, at the end of each half. What? I thought we were trying to shorten the game here. And then they said, but it won't be a TV timeout necessarily. It's always a TV timeout every single time. It's a TV timeout. Nobody wants to see that. It's the end of the game. It's the end of the game. We're trying to finish up, you know, it's two minute offence. The offences are trying to skip one more score defenses or trying to get one more stop. And then there's a timeout. And the momentum dies. The atmosphere and the crowd kind of dies down a little bit. And we watch a Chili's commercial followed by an ozempic commercial. Why? Why are we doing this? Why? Why is it that we're trying to shorten the game, but we're adding timeout? I watch YouTube TV multi screen. That's the way I'm able to oftentimes keep up with what's going on in the big 12 and college football in general. I can't tell you how many times I would look up there and see all four games in TV commercials and none of them were at halftime. It's getting ridiculous. The amount of TV commercials is just ridiculous. And I know what you're going to say. Well, we have to pay for all this stuff somehow. We're going to do commercials. Nope. Just less than the amount of commercials make a higher demand because it supplies lower. You know, if you only have an hour and 15 minutes worth of commercials for a game instead of the current hour and 30 hour and 40, well, that creates less supply. You can then demand more money. Brands will pay for that. I can't say that as an economist, I'm not that. Or as a financial expert. But I do know supply and demand. I know that you can charge more when the supply is less. And I know that there would be more demand to watch college football. If half the time you didn't turn on the TV and see the cheese at commercial of the coach taking a bite of the chip saying some say, well, you know, you know, the commercial I'm talking about it plays 50 times a game. Anyways, that would be the 10th change I would love to see the college football. So again, I'm going to go over to top 10. Number one, transparency. NIL deals revenue sharing. Let us know what the players getting paid. I think that's fair. Number two, equal amount of conference games. Let's all go to eight. Let's all go to nine. Let's not do this eight or nine kind of thing. Number three, better overtime rules. Get rid of the two point shoot out instead started at the 50 yard line. Force teams actually have to drive to get into field. Orange number four, fix the kickoff rules. Let's bring that back. It is the greatest playing college football. Bring it back. Open up the chaos. I mean, I mean, honestly, you know, there's four seconds left and a half. There's a kickoff right now. It's like, okay, whatever. It's half time. If you force a kickoff return, I'm watching because chaos can happen. You never know what's going to happen there. Number five, let's cut back on the replay reviews. Give coaches, coaches, challenges. They only get one if they get a successful. They get a second, but then they're done after that. Number six, more field access. I'd love to hear interviews. I'd love to hear what the coaches are saying. What the referees are playing. What's going on in the replay review room. Number seven, no opting out of bowl games. Play the whole season. You sign up for the team. Don't abandon your guys. Number eight, transfer portal penalties and incentives. Let's not get rid of it. But let's just make it more enticing to stick around. Let's make it a little bit more beneficial for guys to make it out to their senior year. And actually have a senior walk as a place they started. Number nine, let's start games on TV. Let's stop with the whole, okay, now we're going to take you out to provo to watch the BYU vs. Baylor game. Welcome out to provo. The score is 10 to three. There's six minutes left in the first half. Here's a little bit of what happened. I'm going to explain in 20 seconds and then we'll continue on with the game. Let's get rid of that. And number 10, less timeouts for TV commercials. Create more demand by lowering the supply. We're trying to speed up the game and yet we're adding the two minute timeout. I said it was ridiculous when they did it. Everybody said, no, no, no, a trail trail. They're actually trying to speed up the game. No, they're not. They don't care about the money. They're going to make a TV commercial. That's what they're doing. So those are the 10 changes. If you would like to see any other changes, please let me know in the comments and be I'd love to hear what your recommendations are. Also, if you want to hop on the show at any time, leave me a comment on X. Send me a message and we can put that together. I've got some guests lined up for next week. I realize I've been saying that for a little bit. I've been trying to figure things out. Also last week I was on the sickness. It's just been kind of a crazy week and a half. So I apologize for that, but we will get that point forward. So thank you so much. See you again tomorrow tomorrow's top five Tuesday. Got a really fun topic. Make sure you tune in for that. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.[MUSIC]