As they vowed to do back in December, the ACC and Big 12 have apparently deregulated conference championship games, and the landscape could look much different as soon as 2016.

What this means is the Big 12 can have a title game with just 10 teams, which is currently impermissible by NCAA rules the football conferences don’t believe they have to follow, and it means the ACC might get really weird with this: A three-division, 14-team conference.

“I think there’s some belief that ACC would play three divisions, have two highest-ranked play in postseason,” said Bob Bowlsby, chairman of the new NCAA Football Oversight Committee. “Really, nobody cares how you determine your champion. It should be a conference-level decision.

“But because the ACC has persisted in saying, ‘We’re not sure what we’ll do,’ there’s probably a little bit of a shadow over it. In the end, I don’t think it’ll be able to hold it up. We’ll probably have it in place for ‘16.”

That oversight committee would vet the legislation and pass on any recommendations to the NCAA Council for final approval. The new oversight committees in all sports are meant to streamline the rules-making process.

“This isn’t really changing the rule, it’s deregulating,” Bowlsby said. “It’s moving a little bit slow, but I don’t think it’s not stalled in any way.”

(There’s a clever conspiracy theory here that the ACC is making room for a 15th team, which would give it an even 16 teams in its other major sports … and with John Swofford involved, that’s irresistibly intriguing. We haven’t had an expansion caper in too long.)

Of course, it may also mean nothing changes, if not immediately then ever. Deregulation simply means the conferences have the authority to do what they want to do, which in this infant era of separation and autonomy is the way it ought to be.

Personally, I’m for that idea as much as I am against the Big 12 having a (reactionary) title game. The money and the risk/reward don’t carry anywhere near enough weight to affect any influential scale. At the Liberty Bowl it sounded like either Bowlsby was skeptical, too, or that he was at least suspicious about the league being behind it.

“We’re not asking for a waiver to have a playoff and we’re not necessarily declaring that we would have a playoff, he said. “We could certainly take our two highest-ranked teams and have them play, but one of those two teams would have won in the regular season. You have to question if it’s fair to ask that same team to beat the other team again to get past it. I could capably argue either side of that.

Bowlsby reminded his audience that one or two different outcomes on the final week of the regular season could have gotten one of both of his jilted teams into the playoff. Bowlsby did say thought will be given to changing the conference-wide co-champion rule that doesn’t break ties.

“We’ll talk about it, he said. “I think it’s reasonable to argue that without a (championship game) that we might not want a second such situation where we’re different than the others. But our coaches and our administrators are the ones who put the rule in place because they wanted more student-athletes, more coaches and more institutions to be called champions.

“It isn’t just in football. We do it in everything. Would it be feasible to change it just for football? Probably. If that’s the will of the (athletic directors), that’s what we’ll do.

I think the best part about this is the 2016 condition. It doesn’t require or even invite immediate action, which means time might pass and the story line might change. You know, something weird might happen and a 12-0 TCU could be the No. 3 team in the playoff and we stop having this conversation. Suddenly the Big 12 is ingenious because of its distinction. Maybe this is a begrudged concession?

The truth is the Big 12, despite its bumbling crowning process that must and will change, had a bad December day that people delighted in making even worse. That’s the natural reaction, and it’s normally fleeting. The truth is one different outcome in volatile games the same weekend — conference championship games, mind you — gives the Big 12 one team in the playoff. It didn’t happen. That doesn’t mean it’ll never happen. ASK THE BIG 12 ABOUT THAT!

Let me remind you, conference championship games are so important, so best-against-the-best, that Ohio State won its title game 59-0 against a team that didn’t belong in the best-against-the-best model, and the Buckeyes used that as a springboard to the final four. They were worthy, to be sure, but let’s not let the conclusion obstruct our view of the process. You shouldn’t have needed a conference title game to see Ohio State was top-four good, and along the same lines, you shouldn’t have needed a 13th game to judge TCU or to know Baylor could beat the Horned Frogs … which happened, by the way.

And let me remind me of something that usually helps in matters requiring perspective: Reverse the conditions. Let’s go back to December. Would TCU and/or Baylor been keen on a 13th game? Would they have accepted that extra round of self-proving merely because other conferences required it? I, too, could capably argue either side of that, but I’d probably pick “Are you nuts? Of course not.” So what are they doing then? Capitulating?

The true shame or crime or both is this wasn’t settled before the first playoff season. We had two full years to prepare, and the process left the biggest variable imaginable uneven, unresolved and now unforgiven.