The Big 12 will remain intact as a four-team conference for the sport of wrestling next season, Big 12 wrestling liaison Bob Burda said Tuesday.

Despite a formal news release, the NCAA notified the conference in March of its acceptance to allow the Big 12 to continue sponsoring its championship to qualify the conference’s athletes after the departure of Nebraska, which will join the Big Ten next fall.

However, the Big 12 will not retain its automatic-qualifying status that it has had in years past.

“As an automatic-qualifying conference, you automatically get one [automatic qualification] at each weight division for your champion,” Burda said. “Everything is a performance-based system now.”

Last season, the NCAA granted only one automatic-qualifying bid to the 149- and 157-pound weight classes, which were earned by the conference title winners of that weight.

Under this new system, both of those automatic-qualifying bids would be granted solely on performance, potentially leaving some weights to not have any automatic qualifiers for the NCAA Championships.

If the NCAA would not have granted the Big 12 to continue as a four-team conference for wrestling, Plan B would have included the acceptance of independents to join the Big 12 for only wrestling.

A similar situation took place in the Pac-10 after the conference sunk to only four teams, as the conference admitted Boise State along with numerous public universities in California to compete in the conference for only wrestling.

The Pac-10 is now down to six teams, which is the minimum requirement for the sport to be sponsored by a conference, according to NCAA rules.

The third option for the conference would have been to have the four teams compete in the West Regional to qualify their athletes for the NCAA Championships.

The West Regional is designated for independents in wrestling — such as Northern Iowa, Air Force and Wyoming — to qualify their athletes for the national tournament.