Last week, most Big 12 head coaches told ESPN.com that they would favor adding a conference title game if the College Football Playoff selection committee indicated a 13th game carried weight in its process.

Wednesday, the committee indicated just that, prompting Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby to suggest a conference championship game would soon return to the league.

If these two had met for a second time in December, who knows how it would have affected the first College Football Playoff. AP Photo/Jerry Larson

"What we heard was that if we don't go to a championship game, we're at a disadvantage," Bowlsby said. "If we don't make changes, we're potentially going into the season with a short stick in our hand.”

Why this wasn’t worked out before the inception of the playoff, we may never know. And definitely won’t understand.

But what is clear is that the Big 12 is not getting the proper credit it deserves from the committee for playing a nine-game conference schedule.

And so, as a believer in self-determination and controlling one’s own destiny, I, too, have switched sides. Despite its round-robin format, the Big 12 needs to add a championship game.

This obviously comes with risk.

Just ask 1998 Kansas State. Or 2007 Missouri. Both times a conference title game cost the Big 12 a shot at the national title. But at least those Wildcats and those Tigers had only one scoreboard to watch: their own.

“The one thing that I've always have been a proponent of is everyone doing the same thing,” West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen said. "Having that 13th game [to] be on the same level as everyone else is important. Based on what happened toward the end of last year, I think it hurt the Big 12 a little bit.”

Holgorsen is right about the latter. In the final week of the season, Baylor and TCU were the only contenders that stood little chance of playing their way in to the playoff. To get in, the Big 12 needed Ohio State to lose, or at least struggle in the Big Ten championship. That obviously didn’t happen.

Holgorsen, however, is wrong about the former.

With a championship game, the Big 12 wouldn't be operating on the same level as the other conferences. Because the Big 12 would be staging one more conference game than everyone else, except for the Pac-12.

"We have to be very cautious,” Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said. “Having a team that could run through this undefeated, and then you play against an opponent that very well could have two losses, and that team beats the team that is undefeated, and then you knock that team out.”

Gundy’s point is well taken. To mitigate such risk and help protect the Big 12’s top playoff contender, I have another suggestion.

Instead of going back to playing the conference title game at a neutral site, the Big 12 should hold it on the home field of the regular-season champ.

This would boost the conference in four ways.

1. It would give the Big 12 that 13th game the playoff committee holds so dear.

2. It would offer the Big 12 regular-season winner an opportunity for another quality win.

3. It would diminish the chances that the Big 12 champ would lose.

4. It would provide the Big 12 with a whole lot of national buzz, something the league has lacked in the post-realignment era.

Imagine Texas traveling to Norman for the first time in almost a century, or Oklahoma running through the tunnel at Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium. Imagine the buildup that would take place the week leading up in Stillwater or Morgantown or Lubbock. Imagine another “Revivalry” shootout in Waco.

For those reasons, one Big 12 official agreed this would be an idea worth discussing at the conference meetings in Phoenix next week.

There’s precedent for this, too. The Pac-12 started out holding its conference championship game on campus soil before moving it to Santa Clara, California, last year. The difference would be that Big 12 stadiums would actually be overflowing for such conference championship games. Tickets would be easier to sell on a week’s notice. And travel would be negated, at least for the host.

Baylor coach Art Briles correctly pointed out last week that any Big 12 team that went undefeated through the conference in the current format would be in the playoff. But that hasn’t happened since Texas did it in 2009. It’s no coincidence that it was also the last time a Big 12 team played for the title.

Sure, asking a team to beat an opponent twice in the same year is asking an awful lot. But asking a team to run through this conference unscathed is asking too much.

It’s time for the Big 12 to deal in playoff reality.

No doubt, the new system isn’t fair.

And either way, the Big 12 would be at a disadvantage.

But at least with a conference championship, the Big 12 would be playing its way in again.

Instead of -- like last year -- hoping for others to play their way out.