It's unlikely that the origin of the rule establishing 12 as the number of teams required for a conference to conduct a postseason football championship will ever show up as a trivia question, but if it does, anyone keen on Division II history will have an advantage.

Bylaw 17.11.5.2-(c) allows a conference to stage a football championship game between divisional winners only in leagues of at least 12 teams. That provision is playing a significant role in the current conference jockeying occurring in Division I.

However, the rule's roots actually are in Division II.

The proposal was No. 125 at the 1987 NCAA Convention. It was sponsored by the Division II Steering Committee on behalf of Division II's Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, two leagues at the time large enough to operate in a divisional structure. And since it was 1987 -- 10 years before the Association federated its governance -- when a federated piece of legislation was proposed, all three divisions voted on it regardless of whether it affected them. Thus, the 12-institution rule became law for Division I as well.

It was the device that was used when the Southeastern Conference became the first Division I league to expand to 12 teams in 1992. The SEC postseason conference championship game generated millions in additional revenues and became a model for other conferences to follow. Now, in addition to the SEC, the Big 12 and Mid-American Conferences have championship games, and the Atlantic Coast and Mountain West Conferences are considering the 12-school approach as well.

That has caused some consternation for some people who accuse Division I conferences of wanting to expand for financial gain and/or access to the Bowl Championship Series at the expense of league integrity and regional tradition. But while some may see the 12-member rule as a money lure, its intent was more pure when first proposed.

Steve Murray, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) and chair of the Division II Football Committee, said his league was the primary author of the legislation because the PSAC was looking for grass-roots excitement. The 14-member conference (two divisions of seven) had built a league championship game into its 10-game regular-season schedule because it wanted a champion crowned before the eight-team Division II playoffs began. But in those days, the PSAC wasn't getting many teams selected to the limited Division II postseason field, so it proposed an exemption for its championship game as a way to give the large league a reward without compromising its ability to have as much round-robin play as possible.

"The league thought, 'Why not develop something bigger here? Why stop everyone's season early when we could continue our championship game?' " Murray said. "We certainly weren't doing it for TV. The legislation was purely for us."

Division I use only

The irony of ironies, though, came one year after the legislation was adopted when the Division II Football Championship doubled its field from eight to 16 teams. Thus, the PSAC, which placed three teams in the 1988 bracket, never played a conference championship game under the rule meant to allow one.

"In 1988 when Division II expanded its field, the league didn't want to have a team with a late-season loss get knocked out of the playoffs, so it dropped the championship game," Murray said.

The Division II driven rule, though, became Division I's gain when the SEC considered expansion in the early 1990s.

"The 12-member rule wasn't the sole reason for expansion, but it certainly was a factor," said SEC Executive Associate Commissioner Mark Womack. "We started looking at all the pros and cons of expanding from the current 10 members we had, including scheduling, travel distances, additional revenue sources, expanding the 'footprint' of the league -- all of those were factors."

Womack said expansion provided the SEC opportunities to play a divisional and cross-divisional structure and still have a number of teams eligible to compete for a national championship.

"The championship game certainly was an early factor in the discussions," he said, "but it would be misleading to say that the reason we expanded was just in order to have a championship football game. You have to consider whether the overall expansion increases your revenues to the point where it's a financial benefit for your conference and the members, both current and new. You start looking at all the revenue sources -- certainly that's where a championship game plays a part. The championship game is the opportunity for the most dollars to be infused at one time."

Championship-game foibles

Of course, as Murray said, the championship game can be an opportunity for a conference to lose its shot at having a national championship team. The most glaring Division I examples of that came in 1998, the first year of the Bowl Championship Series, when an undefeated Kansas State University lost the Big 12 Conference championship game and a chance to play for the BCS title. In 2001, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, which ironically benefited from Kansas State's loss three years earlier, lost the SEC championship game and a shot at the national crown.

"Certainly, the conference championship game can hurt a team, but it also can benefit one. You don't know that until you have the opportunity to play the game," Womack said. "But there are a lot of benefits -- your champion is guaranteed a spot in the BCS, and you also create a lot of regular-season interest in your divisional races."

Murray said changes in the selection criteria for Division II may negate the risks of a conference championship-game loss. He said new selection criteria call for the strength-of-schedule index to stop with the final regular-season game. That means conference championship games, which could be exempt in 12-team leagues, would not count toward that index and thus could not damage the losing team's selection chances.

Still, Murray said, the challenge is timing since the exempted game probably would be played the first week of the Division II playoffs. That would mean either a conference's top two teams would miss the playoffs or lesser teams would spar for the conference championship. Murray said the Division II championship trumps a league title.

"I'd rather have my trouble in not having a championship game because of the size of my conference than not have a Division II playoff," he said. "I wouldn't encourage anyone to give up an NCAA playoff spot for a conference championship game."

The question for critics seems to be whether Division I is giving up its principles for a conference championship game. While Division II conferences may shy away from expansion to protect access to the Division II Football Championship, Division I leagues may think the payoff is better than the playoff.

"Division I isn't playing the game to determine a national champion," said one Division II commissioner. "They're playing the game for money."

Who knew that would be a byproduct of lightly regarded legislation 16 years ago? Maybe that would be a good trivia question, too.