It is official: conferences no longer need to have 12 teams in order to stage a conference title game in football.
Now, the athletic directors in the Big 12 still need to vote on if, when, and how they want to institute a potential conference title game, but the major roadblock is now gone, as the conference does not have to seek expansion in order to get the much needed game.
The Big 12 also still has a lot of questions to answer about which teams actually go to the title game and how it wants to proceed with regards to the College Football Playoff. Since they play a round robin schedule, the conference title game would be guaranteed to be a rematch, and could potentially hurt the conference in the long haul if the two teams meeting in the title game end up splitting the two games they played.
Interestingly enough, the ACC actually voted against the proposal. Under the current proposal, a conference still must have round robin play in order to have a title game. The ACC voted against it because the conference was actually in favor of full deregulation.
