It was a waste of time and energy and will be, for a moment, embarrassing, but in the end the Big 12 Conference's decision to not expand its membership was a wise one. Now the question is whether it's smart enough to take an even more sage path and push for something that can help hold the league together – a guaranteed automatic bid to an expanded college football playoff. After all, a conference with strong leadership would've been able to realize that 15 months ago and tuned out Oklahoma president David Boren who claimed, apparently in need of a campus safe space, that having just 10 schools left the league “psychologically disadvantaged.”