IRVING -- Big 12 athletic directors worked Tuesday to determine the league's preferred bowl lineup with the anticipation that the Cotton Bowl will become part of college football's new playoff system.
The 2-hour discussion about bowl alignment took up a bulk of the agenda as the ADs wrapped up a two-day meeting with Commissioner Bob Bowlsby and other league officials that also involved football scheduling.Most of the first day was spent discussing the makeup of the 10-team league and "what-if" scenarios about staying at that number or eventually expanding.According to Forbes, the Big 12 will generate about $26.2 million per team this school year through network television deals, bowl games and NCAA tournaments. That's the highest per-team average of any conference.The Big 12 had nine of its 10 teams go to bowl games this past season. No other league had ever sent 90 percent of its teams to a bowl in the same season.While the first semifinal games in the new playoff system at the end of the 2014 season will be played in the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl, the site of the first championship game hasn't been selected. Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, where the Cotton Bowl is played, seemingly is a front-runner for that title game and then to be in the rotation for semifinal games after that.When all that is finally settled in the next few months, the Big 12 will be ready to work on other bowls.Under current arrangements through the 2013 season, the Cotton Bowl gets the top pick of Big 12 teams not in the BCS.Bowlsby said it would be a "fair projection" that the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, which now has the next pick after the Cotton Bowl, or the Meineke Bowl in Houston could move up in the picking order if the Cotton Bowl is in the playoff rotation.Another priority for the Big 12 is getting a tie-in with one of the Florida bowls. Bowlsby said the league has had conversations with Gator Bowl officials and two other bowls in Florida."California, Florida, and Texas comprise more recruits than the whole rest of the country combined," Bowlsby said. "That's been a shortcoming of our bowl lineup in the past, and we need to fix it if we can."The Big 12 already has a bowl agreement with the Holiday Bowl.
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