Sorry to get this thread off track a little bit here but I think I have a creative/innovative idea to draw some eyes to the Big 12 if the Four Corners schools end up joining us. Ideally, I would like to see us maintain some geographic continuity and protect rivalries but also promote entertaining TV/matchups to drive revenue. I believe best way to do this would be to create 4 pods of 4 teams.
Pod 1 - Eastern Pod
West Virginia
Cincinatti
UCF
Oklahoma State
Pod 2 - Big Eight Pod
Iowa State
KU
Kansas State
Colorado
Pod 3 - Lone Star Pod
Texas Tech
Baylor
TCU
Houston
Pod 4- PAC Pod
Arizona
Arizona State
BYU
Utah
We can argue about which team goes in which pod later but a 4x4 pod structure fits nice. You play each team in your pod every year (3 games) then you rotate to one of the other pods annually (4 games) every year. I know this may be tough for a PAC/East matchup but you would only have two awful roadtrips once every 3 years so that really isn't too bad. Under this format, this places each team at 7 conference games currently.
At this point, I think it would be incredible TV to take the standings and reseed the teams to create 4 different 4 team brackets. If you are in first place in your pod, you get placed in a bracket with all the other 1 seeds to duke it out in a playoff for the Big 12 championship. All the 2 seeds get placed in a bracket together. All the 3 seeds get placed in a bracket together. All the 4 seeds get placed in a bracket together.
Winner of semi #1 plays winner of semi #2. Loser of semi #1 plays loser of semi #2 in each bracket. If you want competitive games and people tuning in to games that matter in November, literally make the conference title into a regular season playoffs and then put teams of a similar level against each other so we have good games. Because every team is guaranteed 2 games in their bracket, you still play 9 conference games and can play 3 non-con (if those even really exist in the future). For all I care, we can try to find a way to even play a 13th game somehow. I haven't thought that far but lets get innovative and create a cool product doing it.
TL;DR: Be creative. Do something to attract eyeballs without being gimmicky. If "one true champion" is going to be the motto, make the Big 12 championship a 4 team playoff. If you build an entertaining and fun product with competitive games, people are going to watch and were going to be just fine.