Yes, because with the 4 new teams we no longer have a perfect round robin. The Big XII always had this sort of parity, but because everyone played everyone it worked out fairly nicely for the last 8 years.

But this year Texas doesn't play OK State and K-State doesn't play oklahoma. Ostensibly, the Wildcats and Pokes gain an unfair advantage by not having to play both of the SEC-bound teams, hence the clarification. The issue though is that the tie that may need breaking is between those two exact teams.

There's a bunch of teams at the top vying for spots in the championship game, and there are possibilities for ties. Some combinations of W-L to close out the season had certain assumed tie-breakers to get to the championship game, but this "clarification" breaks some of the assumptions. The statement by the Big XII acts as if nothing has changed, but it looks like they added qualifying words that weren't there previously in order to make this clarification.