ESPN College Football

Posted by ESPN.com's Tim Griffin

The chasm between the Big 12's North and South divisions this season seems as wide as ever.

As the South Division basks in national notoriety with four teams ranked in the top 10 in most polls this week, the North has one team in the Top 25. And the 10-2 edge that the South has produced is a sign that last season's North Division edge in the cross-division games was a one-season aberration.

The best example came on Saturday with three games that showed how wide the gap appears to be again. Texas Tech went into Kansas and blew the game open by scoring 49 straight points in a 63-21 blowout. Big 12 South cellar dweller Texas A&M took care of North bottom feeder Iowa State. Oklahoma rolled up 55 first-half points in dismantling Kansas State. Nebraska needed a late charge to subdue traditional South patsy Baylor at home.

And it's been even worse in championship games. South teams have won the last four since Kansas State's stunning 2003 upset over Oklahoma, which came only a few days after Oklahoma defensive coordinator Mike Stoops left for the head coaching job at Arizona.

Since then, Big 12 South teams have claimed four consecutive championship games. The South teams have won those four games by a combined margin of 171-30 -- an average of 35.25 points per game.

Veteran Omaha World-Herald Big 12 reporter Lee Barfknecht proposed an interesting change, saying that the league should switch to an East/West divisional alignment to break up the power base in the South.

He says that too much concentration of power and schools with money are seen with South Division powers like Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M clumped together. Schools like Texas Tech and Oklahoma State are both aggressively spending resources to keep up with the South power trio and pushing them past the other schools in the North.

He decided that the following alignment would be the best way to break that up:

• Big 12 East: Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Missouri, Iowa State, Texas A&M, Baylor.
• Big 12 West: Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Texas Tech, Kansas, Kansas State.

Barfknecht then proposes a 5-2-1 scheduling model that would allow one cross-division game a season to preserve an old rivalry.

If that was the case, I'd propose keeping Texas A&M-Texas, Missouri-Kansas and Oklahoma-Nebraska as no brainers. We could then also suggest Iowa State-Kansas State, Oklahoma State-Texas Tech and Baylor-Colorado for the other game that would be played every year. Heck, we could call them Big 12 classic games and play them all over Thanksgiving weekend.

I think this proposal has some merits, but I like mine better.

My idea might be the most radical of them all. Why not put all Big 12 teams in the same conference and let everybody play each other every year? It would give each team 11 conference games and one nonconference game to fatten up to start the season.

While some schools wouldn't want to give up their seven and eight-game home schedules, the greater good of the conference would be sparked. And I've got to think the conference would receive a better television contract if the league's partners knew they could count on 11 conference games a season from every team.

Some coaches would complain about having six home games one season and five the next. A way around that would be to designate one game per season as a neutral-site contest. That would provide a truer champion with five home games, five road games and one neutral-site game each season.

Texas-Oklahoma and Missouri-Kansas already do that. Iowa State-Kansas State have announced plans to play in Kansas City. Oklahoma State and Texas Tech would have agreed already if they could decide whether to play at the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium in Arlington, Texas, or the renovated Cotton Bowl. Now they could play at both over a two-year period.

That would leave Nebraska-Colorado and Baylor-Texas A&M as games needing a neutral site home. And while I know that both are key home games for both schools, the Nebraska-Colorado game could work switching between Invesco Field in Denver and Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. And I've got to believe that operators at Reliant Park in Houston or the Alamodome in San Antonio would be lining up to bid to attract the Aggies and Bears to play at their facilities.

What would such a move mean to the conference? It would result in a truer champion, alleviating such "paper tigers" as Kansas last season when the Jayhawks went to a BCS bowl without playing Texas, Texas Tech or Oklahoma. It would better promote the idea of "league think" because the old Big Eight/Southwest Conference schism would finally be eradicated for good. Fans would be treated to better home and road schedules because they would have three conference games replacing three typically meaningless nonconference contests. And the league would aggressively be marketing its product in the biggest cities of its geographical area.

Sure, it would result in a rematch in the championship game, but we've already seen that happen in six of the previous 12 seasons, anyway.

I think my idea would work. And I think that Barfknecht's idea isn't a bad one, either.

Of course, I'm not expecting the conference's leadership to be much concerned about fixing what I believe to be a growing competitive imbalance.

But it's something that definitely deserves discussing. Because the Big 12 has to decide whether it wants a balanced conference or one that has the toughest division in college football and another one that lags far behind.

What do the Big 12 fans think? Are they concerned if the league is becoming too top-heavy in one division at the expense of the rest of the league? Can the North Division ever catch up to the South?

I'd be curious to read some of your opinions.