Dan Wolken

USA TODAY Sports

SAN ANTONIO — The Big 12 will be able to hold a conference championship game in football while retaining its 10-member structure following a vote from the Division I council on Wednesday at the annual NCAA convention.

The previous rule stated that conferences needed a minimum of 12 members to play a championship game between two division winners. The new rule will allow any conference with fewer than 12 members to hold a championship game between the top two teams in the standings as long as it plays a round-robin schedule, regardless of whether there's a divisional alignment.

The rule essentially means the Big 12 will not be forced to add members in order to hold a championship game, which could be a key factor in gaining entry to the College Football Playoff. The Big 12 was left out of the first Playoff in 2014 and saw this season’s league champion, Oklahoma, bumped from No. 3 to No. 4 while sitting out championship weekend.

Alabama tops final 2015 NCAA 1-128 Re-rank

“What it does is it keeps us from being forced to expand just because we want to access a championship game, and I think we found out after two years of the playoff that we are disadvantaged at some level by not having a 13th data point,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. “Going forward we’re going to have to decide if we can live with it. If we don’t want to live with it, we have a path to get the 13th data point.”

It’s not certain the Big 12 will choose to play a championship game, which could be worth upward of $20 million to the league in television rights and ticket revenue. One major drawback, particularly with the Big 12’s round robin schedule, is that a championship game would automatically produce a regular season rematch. The issue will be up for discussion next month when the Big 12’s presidents and athletics directors meet in Dallas.

“We accommodated in our schedule the clearing of that championship weekend for next year,” Bowlsby said. “Whether we’ll do that or not, I don’t know if the votes will be there, and if they are, I don’t know if we’ll be prepared to move forward that quickly.

“This gives us a clear picture of what the rules are going to be going forward so we can go about the process of trying to decide what we want to do.”

It also puts a pause, at least temporarily, to the conference realignment rumor mill, which flared up again prior to Monday’s meeting.

Initially the Big 12, along with the ACC, had proposed full deregulation of championship games. The Big Ten, however, countered last month with an amendment that required divisional play in leagues with fewer than 12 members; a wrench targeted more at the ACC, which had previously been attached to some unconventional ideas for producing a championship game matchup.

But the Big 12 had no interest in two five-team divisions — it would cause some other logistical issues for the league — and the thinking was that the Big Ten’s amendment could force the Big 12 into expanding if it felt a championship game was necessary in the playoff era.

In the end, the leagues came to a compromise and the Big Ten re-submitted its amendment, allowing for the round-robin provision to satisfy the Big 12’s needs. There were two dissenting votes (the Southeastern Conference and the American Athletic Conference) and one absentee (the Pac-12), but the proposal still passed the 75% threshold to be adopted by the Div. I council.

The new rule will also allow the Sun Belt, which has fewer than 12 members, to explore a championship game.

“I think it’s reflective of a really collaborative atmosphere,” said Northwestern athletics director Jim Phillips, who chairs the council. “It allows a conference like the Big 12 to have a championship game without facilitating the need to expand conferences and to go through some of the past experiences we’ve seen. It really fits. The Big 12 is happy. We had a really strong percentage support it, and I think we ended in a really good place for everybody involved.”

The other major action item for the Division I council on Wednesday was approving a proposal that allows underclassmen in men’s basketball to pull their names out of the NBA Draft and return to school up to 10 days after the draft combine, which is typically held in mid-May.

Last year’s deadline was April 14 — roughly a week after the Final Four — so basketball players will now have more than a month to gather information and make decisions. Additionally, the NCAA will allow them to participate in the combine and one workout with an NBA team without losing their eligibility.

“We synched it up with some of the NBA timelines and their ability to work kids out and give a real fair and objective view about where a student-athlete would find themselves in a mock draft,” Phillips said. “That was driven completely by what was best for the student-athletes.”

PROJECTING THE 2016 TOP 25