Coaches didn&#8217;t want this game, you know.</p><p>When the Big 12 championship was put to a vote by the folks with the most at stake, the count went 11-0 against. Texas A&amp;M&#8217;s R.C. Slocum had a conflict and missed the straw poll at the 1995 spring meeting. He later said he would have made it an even dozen.</p><p>For a game that has rarely produced much suspense &#8212; only three of the 12 previous ones headed into Saturday&#8217;s Oklahoma-Missouri meeting at Arrowhead Stadium have been decided by single digits &#8212; the Big 12 championship game has made plenty of news for the wrong reasons.</p><p>In 2001, Colorado beat Texas in the thriller, and a few hours later the Buffaloes learned Nebraska, a team it had just defeated by 26, would play in the BCS national championship game.</p><p>In 2003, the Sooners lost by four touchdowns to Kansas State and advanced to the BCS title game.</p><p>This year&#8217;s game is halfway to following the trend. Oklahoma is a big favorite to win its sixth championship and third straight, and the Sooners&#8217; very presence in Kansas City has caused consternation.</p><p>Maybe you picked up on it. Tied for first with Texas and Texas Tech, lost to the Longhorns, ranked behind them in the Harris poll, ticked off the folks in Austin and set off righteous indignation throughout punditry?</p><p>It remains part of the game&#8217;s story line, though the time is long since past to stick the issue on the back burner. On a visit to Norman earlier this week, the South triangle tie-up continued to dominate chatter over the championship, and the Arrowhead game provides plenty of angles.</p><p>&#8226;Bob Stoops will try to extend his lead of Big 12 championships. He has five. Seven others are tied with one, a group Mizzou&#8217;s Gary Pinkel looks to join.</p><p>&#8226;No quarterback has ever won more than one of these games, not even a Sooner. Sam Bradford would be the first.</p><p>&#8226;The last time a team looked as unbeatable as these Sooners, Darren Sproles and Ell Roberson ran wild and led the Wildcats to the greatest moment in their athletic history by beating Oklahoma. Missouri will have such an opportunity.</p><p>The Tigers wouldn&#8217;t, if Nebraska coach Tom Osborne and his group had their way.</p><p>Coaches were fine with the North and South split but figured a loss for one of the division winners would damage national-championship aspirations. Among the most outspoken was Osborne, who railed against the idea that summer when coaches gathered for the annual media day.</p><p>This was before the BCS. College football had six slots available for major bowls. Four conference champions advanced along with two at-large teams. Osborne had done his research. In the previous 10 years, he determined the 12 teams forming the new conference would have placed two teams in this bowl alliance eight times.</p><p>But knock one out with a playoff and &#8220;your chances of being ranked high enough to play in one of these bowls is not very good,&#8221; Osborne said.</p><p>The coaches&#8217; idea was to let each division winner seek its own postseason fortune.</p><p>About that time, the coaches learned a little something about their influence.</p><p>The Big 12 was always going to sponsor a championship game. League presidents had told inaugural commissioner Steve Hatchell to pursue the game because they understood its value to the league&#8217;s television contract.</p><p>In a cruel twist, Osborne&#8217;s Cornhuskers were trip-wired in the first Big 12 title game. A victory over unranked Texas would have sent them to a third straight national-title game, but the Longhorns pulled the shocker, proving Osborne prophetic.</p><p>The event&#8217;s two-tiered theme is upsets in the early years, blowouts in the latter.</p><p>But we keep showing up. The majority of games have been sellouts, and the last one at Arrowhead drew more than 80,000 for Oklahoma-Nebraska in 2006. ABC puts it in prime time.</p><p>It is a big deal. Missouri fans soured by last weekend&#8217;s loss to Kansas and feeling hopeless about their chances against the Sooners shouldn&#8217;t miss it. In this case, the coaches were wrong.