As Bob Bowlsby leaves Big 12 commissioner’s role on high notes, here is his biggest regret

Silence hung in the AT&T Stadium air for a few seconds as Bob Bowlsby contemplated his response to a question about the biggest regret in his tenure as Big 12 Conference commissioner.

A good question produced an interesting answer.

It didn’t involve last year’s conference realignment bombshell of the impending loss of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC but it was specific to the Sooners and an on-field performance.

“The Rose Bowl semifinal,” Bowlsby said Wednesday at Big 12 Media Days.

Baker Mayfield-led Oklahoma held a two-touchdown lead on Georgia at halftime of the 2017 College Football Playoff semifinal and wound up losing. Gone was the Big 12’s best opportunity to play for a national championship in the CFP era.

“We’ve had teams good enough to play in the national championship final, and it hasn’t worked out.” Bowlsby said.

League history wouldn’t necessarily have altered by a different outcome, Bowlsby said. But no football champion is perhaps the biggest missing piece of Bowlsby’s decade as the Big 12 leader.

That chapter, and Bowlsby’s life in college sports, comes to an end officially at the end of the month when Brett Yormark takes over as the Big 12’s fifth commissioner.

Bowlsby goes out on several high notes. The league won seven NCAA championships. Kansas’ basketball title marked the fourth straight year of a Big 12 men’s Final Four team. Three softball semifinalists were from the Big 12, including an Oklahoma-Texas final.

This bottom line also was the best in league history. Big 12 schools received a record $42.6 million in league revenue.

The conference seems on solid footing. After the stunning announcement by the Longhorns and Sooners a week after last year’s football Media Days gathering, the Big 12 moved quickly to replenish with the addition of Cincinnati, Houston, Central Florida and Brigham Young. In the current realignment climate, the Big 12 is in much better shape than a year ago.

Market forces have long dictated conference hopping and that’s happening now with Big Ten adding USC and UCLA for 2024.

What does it mean for the future of college sports? Bowlsby sounded like an economics professor.

“This isn’t any different than what’s happened in every small town in America,” he said. “The corner drugstore has gone away. The mom and pop store has gone away. Capitalism is engulf and devour. It’s an aggregation of resources and not any different than what’s happened in a whole bunch of different walks of life.”

Bowlsby doesn’t see the Big 12 or other conferences going the way of mom and pop stores and said revenue distribution isn’t the only measure of success.

“The Big 12, the Pac-12 every league is exactly the same,” Bowlsby said. “I’ve been in three of the autonomy conferences and they’re all exactly the same. There are two or three bell cows at the top that are typically successful. There a bunch that compete in the middle and there are some that are bottom dwellers and are trying hard to get to the middle.

“Now, what you’ve seen in the last two years is the top of the food chain has moved through aggregation. Does it weaken the other leagues? Sure it does. Can you compensate for your it? You can. The jury is still out on how successful you can be.”