It seems only fitting that the weirdest arrangement in college football – a conference championship game played in a league that already has a full round-robin schedule – could feature a rematch only eight days after the teams’ first meeting.

Welcome to the Big 12, where in pursuit of the College Football Playoff, the zany becomes routine.

In case you haven’t heard, Oklahoma and West Virginia are barreling toward a regular-season meeting on Nov. 23 in Morgantown. But after a super-cool night kickoff on Black Friday, it’s very possible the Sooners and Mountaineers could then reconvene Dec. 1 in Arlington, Texas.

That isn’t set in stone, of course. With three games left, nothing is. But even as Oklahoma and West Virginia are both in the playoff conversation, the league is thisclose to what might be a nightmare scenario.

It’s not hard at all to envision the Big 12, in trying to design a system that pushes teams into the playoff, instead knocking itself out of contention. And if it happens, it would all be so very Big 12:

Take the best way to determine a champion – everybody plays everybody. Add a significant extra layer of difficulty with a rematch. And then, after all of that, do it the very next week.

“I think it’s less than ideal,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby says. “If it’s two evenly matched teams, it doesn’t take much imagination to see one game going one way and one game going the other.”

If it happened this year, the playoff would go on without the Big 12.

For now, it’s all just a hypothetical; Texas and Iowa State have very realistic paths into the Big 12 championship game, too. But with Oklahoma hosting Oklahoma State on Saturday – Bedlam in Norman – it’s a good time to revisit how we came to the potential of Sooners-Mountaineers, Parts I and II played in a span of 192 hours.

Making the whole thing more delicious is this: When the Big 12 decided to restart its conference championship game – never mind that the league now has only 10 teams – the Bedlam rivalry was moved away from the Thanksgiving weekend slot it had occupied for about a dozen years.

Bowlsby says it was part of a larger philosophical decision not to pin rivalry games to certain weekends. But league insiders acknowledge the move was made because of concern that the Sooners and Cowboys, who had battled for Big 12 supremacy off and on for several years, might have to play twice in a week.

The only rivalry that’s currently anchored to a spot on the calendar is the Red River shootout. Oklahoma vs. Texas must be played in October because of its tie-in with the Texas State Fair.

“We made no attempt to game the system,” Bowlsby says. “We just spread the rivalry games throughout the season.”

Whether that’s a good idea, who knows? And it’s worth noting the league has reversed course. For next season, at least, Bedlam moves back to its old position on the regular season’s final weekend, but Bowlsby says that’s not necessarily a permanent return.

In the league’s current scheduling format, there’s not necessarily a solution that guarantees a permanent return to the playoff. And that’s what all of these gyrations have been about.

Back in 2014, the first year of the playoff, Baylor and TCU finish tied atop the Big 12 with one loss apiece, but neither got in. Jeff Long, then the selection committee chairman, suggested a huge factor was the “13th data point” earned by Ohio State in a Big Ten championship thrashing of Wisconsin – and by the lack thereof from the Big 12.

Then-Oklahoma president David Boren told everyone the league was “psychologically disadvantaged,” and pushed a deep dive into whether or not to expand. After months and a process that became circus-like, the Big 12 stood pat, which was the correct decision. But it also decided to add that 13th data point.

Computer modeling done by Navigate Research, the firm hired to consult during the expansion exploration, suggested the Big 12 would be 10-12 percent more likely of getting a team into the playoff with a conference championship.

Next thing anyone knew, the Big 12 had a championship game. It kept the nine-game, round-robin schedule, which guaranteed a rematch. And it decided not to split into five-team divisions, instead choosing to match the teams with the best records.

All of which is admirable if the goal is to determine “One True Champion” (and while that slogan was widely panned, it was actually a pretty good description of the Big 12’s process). No one in any other league runs that kind of gauntlet.

On the other hand: No one in any other league runs that kind of gauntlet.

And beyond all of that is the specter, which looms as very possible this season, of a rematch only week after the teams' regular-season meeting.

“We’ve got enough good teams, I think our balance is the best of any of the leagues,” Bowlsby says. “We’re gonna have key matchups at the end of the year. There’s a lot of good games.”

And always, there’s one guaranteed rematch. Especially if it means two meetings in eight days, the Big 12 will have to hope zany doesn’t become chaos.