Dallas ? After the College Football Playoff committee passed on including either TCU or Baylor in the inaugural four-team tournament for college football’s national championship last season, players and coaches from both programs knew they wouldn’t escape Big 12 Football Media Days without addressing the snubs.

A day after TCU coach Gary Patterson said he didn’t think the conference needed a championship game to help its marquee teams’ chances in the national title hunt, Baylor coach Art Briles said Tuesday at the Omni Dallas Hotel getting left out wouldn’t alter his personal scheduling philosophy.

In 2014, the Bears went 11-1 in the regular season but took some flak for their non-conference slate, which featured SMU, Northwestern State and Buffalo. Unchallenged early in the season, BU won each game by at least 42 points.

“Truth be known, I think, if we’d have gone 12-0, there’s no doubt we’re in there (the final four), and we’re rolling,” Briles said. “So that’s something, if we win all our games, it takes care of itself.”

Non-league scheduling, of course, is mapped out years in advance, the coach pointed out.

“We’re actually working on our schedule to maybe make it look better to the public and help us,” Briles said, “if it does come down to that. But I’ve never met a good loss or met a bad win.”

If Baylor can make it through 2015 unblemished, the coach added, both the program and the Big 12 will be in good shape for the postseason.

Stoops addresses Mixon’s reinstatement

For all the time Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops spent talking football, he also had to discuss his decision to keep red-shirt freshman running back Joe Mixon in the program. OU suspended Mixon for the 2014 season after he allegedly assaulted a female student a year ago and later accepted a plea bargain in the case.

“First, let me say there’s no place for it,” Stoops began. “It should never happen. There’s not only domestic violence, but there’s violence toward women, there’s violence in general. None of it should be tolerated, and it has been disciplined.”

Stoops said the Sooners haven’t distanced themselves from Mixon, because they decided instead to implement “internal measures” and high standards for his reinstatement.

“We also feel that, being an educational institution and the age of these young men, they deserve an opportunity to do that, and it’s our job to help them,” the coach said, adding any further failure to meet OU’s standards would result in Mixon’s dismissal.

Praise for ISU’s Meyers

An unheralded defensive lineman in his fourth-year junior season, Iowa State’s Mitchell Myers wouldn’t have figured into many big-picture conference discussions a year ago.

But Cyclones coach Paul Rhoads didn’t want to let his courageous lineman’s offseason go unnoticed. In January, Meyers was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“Since then, he’s gone on to receive six months of chemotherapy,” Rhoads shared. “This Friday will be Mitchell’s last chemo appointment. During that time, this entire summer, he hasn’t missed a workout with our football team and with his teammates, going through six months of chemotherapy.”

A Houston, native, Meyers will undergo radiation in his hometown before rejoining ISU in September.

OSU emphasizes ‘D’

When Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy’s name comes up, it most often is associated with offense. But the 11th-year Cowboys coach said he and his staff began planning for a defensive surge four years ago.

“We felt like we needed to be more competitive on defense, and we built up our numbers,” Gundy said. “We allotted more scholarships on that side of the ball than we did on offense. I think it’s paying off for us now at this time.”

OSU is the only Big 12 team with three defensive players on the preseason all-conference team: junior defensive lineman Emmanuel Ogbah, senior linebacker Ryan Simmons and senior defensive back Kevin Peterson.

UT seeking progress

Charlie Strong declared last year’s 6-7 finish didn’t meet his standards.

“It will never be good enough at the University of Texas,” Strong said. “We know we lost a lot of players on defense, returned a lot on offense, but we have to improve as a coaching staff. We have to do a better job of coaching.”

Along with the challenges of the Big 12 schedule, UT opens at Notre Dame.

“But the good thing about it, why would you want it any other way?” the second-year UT coach asked. “That’s why you’re here. You’re here to go compete for championships.”