TCU AD Del Conte says 13th game was not part of playoff criteria

TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte said the Big 12 believed it did not need a title game to help its champion move into playoff contention.

“It never entered into the conversation at the beginning of the year,” he said. “That was not the criteria that they put forward. But obviously, having a 13th game propelled Ohio State into that position.”

Playoff selection committee chairman Jeff Long said the enormity of Ohio State’s 59-0 victory in its conference championship game was a large factor in its move from No. 5 to No. 4.

The Big 12 co-champion Horned Frogs lost their spot in the playoff when the committee bumped Florida State to No. 3. The other Big 12 co-champion, Baylor, was also left out, leaving the conference to face criticism for the lack of a 13th game.

TCU coach Gary Patterson said it may be time to re-evaluate that, but that he would also be open to a tiebreaker game in case two teams have the same record at the end of the regular season, as TCU and Baylor did this year. Currently, the league declares co-champions, per a coaches’ vote.

“If we’ve got to have a championship game so it gives us a better opportunity, we’ll have to go do that,” Patterson said. “So that means we’ll have to accept that.”

Not enough

Del Conte said it came down to TCU’s “body of work” not being good enough as the committee selected its four teams.

“We were told at the beginning of the year we were going to be judged by the merits of our work,” he said. “We felt that was the case.”

Del Conte said the Big 12’s depth as a conference may have been overlooked, but he said he was proud of Patterson not politicking or running up scores.

“We got ourselves in position where we did everything we could against Iowa State,” Del Conte said. “Gary showed tremendous class putting in our reserves at the 9-minute mark, taking a knee when we did. It’s not about embarrassing a conference school. We didn’t want to do that, and never would Gary want to do that.

“We left it all on the field. At the end of the day, the committee felt the body of work wasn’t quite good enough. They had a hard job to do.”

Scheduling philosophy

Del Conte said TCU remains satisfied with its nonconference scheduling philosophy in football.

“We’ve always been satisfied with it,” he said. “They gave instructions that the quality of your nonconference opponent would be taken into account. Sixteen months ago, we needed a game, and we worked diligently to get a Power 5 conference team in Minnesota. We found them.”

The Horned Frogs have a home-and-home series with Arkansas beginning in 2016, then a home-and-home series against Ohio State in 2018 and a home-and-home series against Cal in 2020.

Patterson said in some cases, it’s better to schedule a one-year neutral site game with a top nonconference opponent, but that he, too, agrees with a schedule that includes at least one marquee opponent.

System patience

Patterson said it’s not time to change the number of teams that make the playoff, at least for a few years.

“You got to wait a couple years to see how it all pans out,” he said. “If we were to change something right now, we could make even more mistakes. I think we need to let it go for a couple of years, see how it fits, and see if it’s better than what we had in the first place. Whether it’s to go to eight or go back to two.”

Patterson said the top two this year would have been obvious, although not every year. And he said going to eight teams would require more games, and that it might someday make an athlete consider his pro stock over playing a 14th or 15th college game.

“That’s going to happen,” Patterson said.

This story was originally published December 7, 2014 at 9:59 PM with the headline "TCU AD Del Conte says 13th game was not part of playoff criteria."