The Big 12 scheme actually works really well with the Noles.

Not bad.

Come get some.

What "scheme" is that; the Roman numeral XII?

It's the big12 scheme...thought you could see that. Not that difficult. /wickedson

Does the Big12 still own the rights to the "Big14"?

Hell no:

Why Pitt should pull a "TCU"
College football is a business. Period. I don't blame schools for switching conferences BUT I still hate to see it happen. I remember when Pitt applied to the ACC, I was so pumped. The thought of a schedule with Miami, Florida State, and Clemson coming to ole Heinz was great. The thought of North Carolina and Duke coming to the Pete was even better. Now that it appears FSU wants out, I'm starting to get the feeling that Pitt is going to go through all this conference realignment stuff all over again... If FSU leaves, expect dominoes to fall. It has been reported that Clemson wants out as well. With the Big 12 and SEC making the bowl agreement last week, it is easy to know that the ACC and Big East will be looking from the outside once again. So if FSU and Clemson leave, then the conference will have one decent football school (Va Tech) and the rest dominated by rich basketball programs.

Sound familiar? Yep, basically Pitt will be back where it was in early September before it applied to the ACC. Pitt should try to get into the Big 12. Before everyone starts calling me delusional, let me just remind everyone that the Big 12 has shown interest in Pitt as early as last year. People will accuse Pitt of being "sleazy". You know what, it would be true. It would be absolutely true, it would be a sin, and it would be a wrong. But guess what? In today's world of the business and power driven college football, you either improve, or die. #TCU

http://www.360sportsnetwork.com/2012...-pull-tcu.html

I don't know for sure, but I've read several times that we own Big 14 and Big 16

Pitt is not getting in unless Notre Dame demands it.

I think the Big 16 part might be false. But I don't know for sure on either.

I remember at the beginning of the formation of the Big 12, they bought the rights to Big 14 and Big 16 as well. There was a quote to the effect of "We're thinking big for the future".

I am not versed in copyright and trademark laws, so I don't know if you have to renew that, or if its yours until you sell it, or how it works, but I do know they claimed to have bought the rights to both those brands at the inception of the Big 12.

Exactly, and Notre Dame could because they're worth twice as much as the biggest fish we can hope to land (FSU).

Long post incoming. With the coming importance of SOS, especially if we get the top-4 model that the SEC (and probably Big 12) wants, or a plus-one model, I think we'll start to see a new interesting dynamic in college football. If your team is good, you are going to care a great deal about how well other teams in your conference do in non-conference games, and if they lose too many, that could screw your team over.

Here's Sagarin last year. Their SOS should be a decent measure. You can see that last year the Big 12 was the highest rated, then SEC very close behind. Then big gap, then B1G, PAC 12, Big East, etc. We'll see why that is soon.

Scroll down to where they show ratings and SOS for teams grouped by conference. Notice anything odd?

Isn't it remarkable how similar the SOS is for each conference? For the ACC, they may be better than the little sister FBS conferences, but compared to the big 4, their SOS blows ass. Despite finishing with the best record of 11-3, VT couldn't crack the top 25 because of that crappy SOS. Notice how everyone in the Big 10 is OK, nothing special, but not bad either? (and contrasted with VT, they have 2 teams with 3 losses, both of whom were easily top-25) Now look at the Big 12. Everyone's got a crazy-good SOS. 3 losses got OU a top-4 rating. Scroll down to the SEC, and you can see they have the 2nd-best SOS's, in the teens and 20's, over there 3 losses would have gotten you rated close to top-10.

Obviously the computers are giving credit to strong conferences and less to weaker conferences, obviously being able to play games and only lose 3 in the Big 12 and SEC means a lot more than in the ACC. How did the computers determine that? Did they just somehow "know" that the Big 12 and SEC were tougher without being able to see the games and have a human's intuition and judgment of talent from whats happening on the field? Obviously not.

2011 Non-conference winning percentages:

Big 12 .844
SEC .814
Big 10 .625
Big East .568
PAC 12 .529
ACC .488

The Big 12 lost only 5 OOC games, and the SEC, playing more OOC games, lost 8

Not perfect, the PAC 12 is generally rated higher than the Big East for SOS, they do look at how good the OOC teams are, and the Big East scheduled a lot weaker than the PAC 12, but generally you need, NOT just YOUR team to win non-conference games, you need everyone else in your conference to also win non-conference games. 4 OOC games are better than 3, because if a few teams drop 1 or 2, they've got more of a margin of error to win the other 2 or 3.

This is also going to present an interesting, brand-new dynamic. Before when you had polls you just relied on writers and coaches to believe their eyes, and when you had BCS v1.0, everyone had an auto-bid so it was all cool. You might be vaguely interested in the conference scoreboard, but if a bunch of people in your conference sucked that weekend, big deal, doesn't hurt you much, if at all.

NOW, you should be interested in the non-conference scoreboard a great deal. If you have a really good team, and you think your team has a chance to get in the playoffs and win a title, then you want everyone in your conference to win every non-conference game, and every time a team in your conference loses a game to another conference, it hurts your team's SOS. People wont realize this right away, but in a few years I can picture fans from the strongest team in the conference coming over to the board of someone who lost to a CUSA team to bitch about how much that loss might hurt.

In order to be a really good, awesome conference, and be regarded as such by the computers, you need a .800+ non-con winning percentage. In order to be at least treated respectfully by the computers and still get in the playoffs with 1 or 2 losses, your conference probably needs at least a .650ish OOC winning percentage. If 12 teams are playing 3 OOC games each, you don't want to see more than 12 or 13 losses. (or no more than 7 if you want the conference to be elite that year) If you are playing 4 OOC games each, you can afford up to about 17 total OOC losses, or up to 9 or 10 losses to be considered elite.

Isn't it obvious by now that the top-4 model isn't happening? There is a reason that the SEC just partnered with the Big XII. Those 4 conferences are going to get automatic bids into the playoffs.

SOS will matter for at-large bids, but it isn't going to matter for the conference champs.

I don't think its obvious at all, yet. The SEC did not need to partner with the Big 12 to make sure their conference champ has a good enough rating to qualify as a top-4 champ.

That game is their leverage against the Big 10 and PAC 12. Maybe they'll compromise on a weird 2+2 hybrid or 3+1 hybrid, but the SEC can now say "this 4 conference champ thing is bullcrap, we obviously can't agree, so lets just give up and do the plus-one plan"

They didn't need to partner with the Big 12 to make sure that they were a top 4 conference. They partnered with the Big 12 to make it 100% certain that there are 4 power conferences and everybody else. If there were 5 conferences that could claim to be in the conversation, there would be problems. There is now no way to deny that the ACC is in the conversation.

By showing they are willing to do plus-one and that the Big 10 can't force top-4-champ, the Big 10 and PAC 12 risks getting aced out occasionally under the plus one.

Take last season, whoever wins between LSU-Okie State is surely in, and if Alabama thrashes whoever in their bowl and Stanford loses to Wisconsin, I don't think Wisconsin has a shot at all of getting in. Even if Stanford wins, that might not be enough.

If they at least agree on a 3+1 hybrid, then the Big 10/PAC 12 faction gives in to possibility that the SEC/Big 12 might occasionally get 2 in, in exchange for pretty much guaranteeing that they are in there at least once.