ARLINGTON, Texas — A little more than an hour before the start of the Big 12 Championship Game in front of thousands of empty seats at the Dallas Cowboys’ home stadium, commissioner Brett Yormark addressed the conundrum facing fans with the expanded postseason format.

“The fans now have to decide which games they want to go to,” Yormark said before No. 12 Arizona State played No. 16 Iowa State on Saturday.

The winner will advance to the first 12 College Football Playoffs, possibly as a 12th seed and almost certainly as one of four teams that will play in their opponent’s stadium in the first round.

“If you host the first-round game, you have to play four games to get to the finals and win the championship,” Yormark said. “And that’s something new, plus the conference championship. For the fans I think it’s quite a challenge at the moment.”

Regardless, Yormark remains committed to conference title games. Aside from the fans’ question, there have also been suggestions that some conferences might be better off not playing a title game because of how it relates to playoff hopes.

It is possible that SMU could be eliminated from the playoffs due to a loss to Clemson in the ACC Championship Game. The Sun Devils were the top seed in a tiebreaker in the tight Big 12 race. The top four teams in the 16-team league finished with two conference losses each.

“It’s a tentpole event,” Yormark said. “And especially in this game today, you have to win and you’re there. So it’s a very meaningful game. This is an important part of who we are, our brand.”

The Big 12 has a contract through 2031 to play at 80,000-seat AT&T Stadium. While it’s unlikely that any of the Power Four conferences would abandon the neutral site approach, Yormark didn’t reject the idea of ​​the top seed hosting a championship game.

“We have to think about it,” Yormark said. “We cannot expect our fans to travel to every game given where the world is today and the income they have at their disposal. We’ll see how it goes in the first year, but we have to be clear about it.”

The quantity counts

This is the 10th time the Big 12 Championship Game has been played at AT&T Stadium, and comes one year after the game’s record attendance of 84,523, when Texas – now in the SEC – defeated Oklahoma State to advance to the four-team playoffs.

Iowa State’s only other appearance in a Big 12 title game came during the COVID-19-affected 2020 season, when only 18,720 spectators were able to watch the Cyclones’ loss to Oklahoma.

Other than that, the lowest attendance for a title game under the retractable roof and giant video board was the first time in 2017, when an attendance of 64,104 was announced for Oklahoma’s win over TCU.

doubling

Yormark did not want to repeat his comments from earlier in the week that the Big 12 winner was more deserving of a first-round bye than any other Group of Five Conference champion.

But he also ignored his thoughts a day after No. 10 Boise State beat No. 19 UNLV 21-7. Heisman Trophy candidate Ashton Jeanty ran for 209 yards and a touchdown and has a chance to break the FBS single-season rushing record in the playoffs.

“I don’t want to go into too much detail about how we stack up compared to other conferences,” Yormark said. “But I have to say where I sit, there should be no comparison between us and any G5 conference winner. I will definitely double this. Hopefully the selection committee will do what they need to do.”

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