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At the end of the season, the Big 12 had two teams ranked in the top 6 (I think). A victory by either team over a top 6 opponent would have likely put the victor into the playoffs.
Last season, the perceived weakest team was Florida St, which was the defending national champ, undefeated, and they won their Conference Championship. No way they were being left out. A 1 loss, conference champion SEC can't be left out either because 'everyone' knows the SEC is the most powerful college football conference in history, cough, cough. Ditto for a 1 loss conference champion from the B1G, which may not be the best football conference right now; but, is the most influential conference with a lot of history on their side. TCU had 1 loss to Baylor; but only 2 marquee wins over Texas and Oklahoma, who both had off seasons. Baylor lost to WVU and ditto for marquee wins as TCU. Oregon lost to a decent Arizona team (call it even with Baylor's loss to WVU); but also beat Michigan St (2 losses, beats Baylor), UCLA (3 losses) and wins its conference champion. Have to give it to Oregon.
I can also see this continuing going forward, too. Without a conference champion, teams from the XII have to 1) go undefeated, 2) get good seasons from the big 2 (Texas & Oklahoma), 3) some in the upper tier (Baylor, TCU, OK St, WVU) to make noise and 4) schedule serious non-conference games in order to make-up for the lack of a conference title game (Baylor - SMU, N'western St, Buffalo; TCU - Samford, SMU; OK - Tenn good, LA Tech & Tulsa, not good; Texas - was OK in 2014 w/ 2 good games w/ BYU & UCLA mixed with N Texas). Otherwise, they are going to be on the outside looking in.