Big XII raises big questions

ByRYAN MCGEE
December 4, 2014, 7:35 PM

— -- As one arrives on the TCU campus, he is greeted with a billboard just off University Drive. The stylized logo of the Big XII is in unmistakable Horned Frog white and gray and trimmed in Horned Frog purple. Beneath the logo is the conference slogan we've come to know so well: One True Champion.

Similar signs line streets in the conference's other college towns, their colors customized to the home team. But if this weekend's dominoes fall the right -- or, depending on your point of view, wrong -- way, the conference office might need to send staffers scrambling to those signs with cans of spray paint for some quick editing: One TWO True ChampionS. On Monday morning, they might have to replace the message altogether, with braggadocious billboards touting "Half The Playoff Bracket, Y'all!"

If that happens -- and it totally could -- would the people who run the playoff, or at least the four Power Five conferences that don't include a roman numeral, start looking at a rewrite of their own? Would they move to close the loophole that the Big XII is about to bumrush? Or would they walk over the conference HQ -- located literally across the street from the playoff offices -- and politely suggest they add a couple of teams?