Big 12’s Bowlsby on Texas, expansion, conference title games and College Football Playoff

IOWA CITY - Bob Bowlsby knew the question was coming, but he laughed when it was the first one lobbed.

In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with University of Iowa students, Bowlsby, the Big 12 Commissioner and former Iowa athletics director, was asked whether he had interest in becoming Texas' next athletics director. He immediately denied it.

'I'm not a candidate for the Texas job,” said Bowlsby, 63. 'Although I'd have to say that if I'd stayed at Stanford, it might be a job that would be attractive. It's a great place. You can be really good at Texas. There are more Division I football recruits in Florida, Texas and California than the other 47 states combined and basketball is not too far behind. So you can be really good there. They'll find a good athletic director, but it's not going to be me.”

Bowlsby received his masters in recreation at UI in 1978 and was honored as one of three class of 2015 alumni fellows by the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (CLAS). He spoke to students for nearly 15 minutes before answering questions for about an hour. Many of the topics ranged from the Big 12 Conference's viability to the College Football Playoff.

The Big 12 endured more disruptions than any other Power 5 conference since the Big Ten plucked Nebraska and the Pac-12 grabbed Colorado in June 2010. The following year Texas A&M and Missouri left for the SEC, and the Big 12 expanded to include TCU and West Virginia. That's left the 10-school league to become what Bowlsby called 'numerically challenged.” But the Big 12 is far from ready to expand, he said.

'I don't know if there's anybody out there that really adds value,” Bowlsby said. 'Rutgers and Maryland came in (to the Big Ten). You look at Utah and Colorado (to the Pac-12). Most of the expansion, the ACC is another good example, most of the expansion has come in the lower half of the league when they come in. Anybody that's out there for us would have to come in logically the lower half of our league in terms of the prominence of the institution and the amount of value that they bring.

'I think that expansion is probably fairly stable right now. I will say, just as an aside, I don't think the whole expansion process was really a source of pride for high education. I think we commoditized the institutions of higher learning, and I don't think it was our finest hour. It's settled down now and will probably stay settled down.”

Not adding two schools has prevented the Big 12 from staging a lucrative title game. It also may have kept co-champions - TCU and Baylor - from earning a College Football Playoff bid last season. NCAA rules mandate conferences must consist of 12 teams and two divisions to hold a league title game. Both the Big 12 and the ACC seek to deregulate title games and give conferences autonomy in how title games are staged.

'We don't want to be forced into having two more just for the sake of adding a championship game,” Bowlsby said. 'It's among the worst reasons to expand. There are lots of good reasons to expand, but those are among the worst. So we've asked to have it deregulated.

'It's been approved by the football oversight committee. It's been approved by the council. It's out for membership comment right now, and it'll come back to the football oversight committee. I feel pretty good about the likelihood of it getting through, partly because I think it's the right thing to do and partly because I'm the chairman of the oversight committee. If I can't shepherd that one through, I've really fallen short.

'We'll have a decision coming up as to whether we want to have a championship. Because we play a full round-robin in our league already, it's going to be a rematch of a regular-season game.”

Bowlsby described Big 12 officials as 'bitterly disappointed” neither TCU nor Baylor participated in the inaugural four-team College Football Playoff. But the playoff was a grand compromise among regional and national conferences, historic bowl games and television partners. Bowlsby said the goal was to improve September football with better intersectional games, keep October and November football as exciting as ever and embed the semifinal games within the existing bowl structure.

'We were able to accomplish all of those and we were able to accomplish a revenue-sharing package that everybody would get their arms around,” Bowlsby said. 'It's a lot of money, and it's a long contract. It's got 11 more years on it. I wouldn't say that it will never change but going from four to eight or even four to six, all the sudden you're going to be playing some games before Christmas and the Rose Bowl or the Cotton Bowl or the Sugar Bowl are going to be played on the 22nd of December and that changes 100 years of tradition.

'It's a big improvement over the BCS.”

l Comments: (319) 339-3169; scott.dochterman@thegazette.com