Dallas, TX – In an unprecedented turn of events, the Big 12 Conference has inadvertently crowned Texas Tech University as the national football champion after a complex and, as it turns out, incomprehensible interpretation of their own tie-breaker guidelines.
The announcement, which surprised sports analysts and fans alike, came on the heels of a routine end-of-season evaluation meeting held in a dimly lit conference room. According to a statement released by the Big 12, a computational misstep occurred when senior officials attempted to decode the intricately-woven tapestry of their tie-breaking rules, casually referred to as “The Byzantine Model.”
“Frankly, no one ever thought we’d need to fully apply these rules,” admitted Dr. Helmut Unclear, the Big 12’s Chief Strategy Officer. “We usually just go by whoever has the best uniforms and biggest tailgate parties. This is new territory for us.”
The Byzantine Model, a cryptic document consisting of 42 pages of tax-code-like logic with illustrations likely drawn by a sleep-deprived intern, was designed to handle hypothetical ties using metrics such as fan enthusiasm decibel levels and cumulative marching band steps.
Experts in sports regulation are split on the outcome. Dr. Spence Bytheway, an academic in Athletic Alchemy from the Imaginary University of North-Central Nebraska, insisted that the resolution makes perfect sense under extremely specific and extremely unlikely conditions. “If you consider the altitude at which the ball was thrown during the game’s turning point, Texas Tech’s possession time calculated in dinosaur years, and whether or not Mars was in retrograde—it’s clear they’ve earned this.”
Tragically, Baylor University, left roasting on the spit of their own near-completion, protested vociferously. “We defeated Texas Tech this season, both in actual football and interpretive dance,” lamented Baylor spokesperson, Janet “Jazz Hands” Jackson. “But perverse as it sounds, we should have known that our mascot’s charisma wasn’t properly accounted for within the scoring matrix.”
Humor turned to melancholy as thousands of Texas Tech supporters gathered in Lubbock for an impromptu parade and fireworks display, only to discover that most locals assumed the celebration was for the opening of a new coffee shop that serves all variations of avocado toast.
In a bittersweet twist, the declaration has ironically incentivized other universities to immerse themselves in the art of administrative ambiguity, finally accepting it as the only true path to sports supremacy. As part of preparing for future competitive scenarios, Oklahoma State has announced their intention to hire a dedicated scholar of constitutional obscurity to lead their team.
As the season winds down, and Texas Tech proudly drapes the national championship banner in their gymnasium that will surely need no explanation for future generations, the Big 12 looks forward to a solemn promise of revisiting their guidelines.
At the close of the statement, Big 12 Confusion Committee Chair, Macguffin N. Ploit, offered one last comforting assurance: “True, mistakes were made, but luckily, none of them involved any actual sports.”
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