The 2009 Big 12 Championship Game featured Nebraska, champions of the North division against Texas, champions of the South division. The game was the third championship tilt between the Cornhuskers and Longhorns. Unranked Texas upset No. 3 Nebraska 37–27 in the inaugural Big 12 title game in St. Louis, while No. 2 Nebraska beat No. 12 Texas 22–6 in 1999 in San Antonio. Texas was victorious by a score of 13–12, winning their third Big 12 Conference championship.[2]
From 2009 through 2013, the Big 12 Championship Game was scheduled to be played at the venue now known as AT&T Stadium.[3] During June 2010, however, Nebraska and Colorado announced that they would leave the Big 12 for other conferences in 2011. Because then-current NCAA rules required that a conference have 12 members in order to stage a football championship game that was exempt from the organization's limits on regular-season games, it was announced on September 30, 2010, that the Big 12 would no longer have a conference championship game, starting with the 2011 football season.
Following a January 2016 NCAA rule change that allows FBS conferences to conduct football championship games regardless of their membership numbers, the Big 12 announced that the championship game would be reinstated in 2017.[4]