Hold onto your seats, Big 12 fans.
Mid-tier teams in the conference spent Saturday taking a sledgehammer to its own playoff argument following UCF’s stunning upset of No. 2 BYU in double overtime and Cincinnati’s impressive win over previously-unbeaten and No. 8 Texas Tech.
Those results have tossed the conference’s College Football Playoff hopes in a blender entering Houston-Utah late nearing the end of Week 8.
The Bearcats snapped the Red Raiders’ nine-game Big 12 winning streak dating back to last season hours before Scott Frost and the Knights held off the Cougars, a week after BYU had beaten Notre Dame to move up to No. 2 in the AP poll.
With five top-25 teams entering the weekend, the attention now turns to the primetime battle between the No. 14 Cougars and No. 10 Utah, with the winner getting a leg up on the rest at the top of the conference.
Can either of these teams restore order in the unpredictable league standings?
Behind four touchdown passes from JC French and a career-best 173 yards rushing from Cole Tabb, Cincinnati snapped a two-game skid with a signature win and took advantage of Texas Tech’s season-long sputters in the passing game.
Struggles offensively finally came back to haunt the Red Raiders, who turned it over three times and never recovered from Cincinnati’s 21-point surge in the second quarter.
The ranked win was only Scott Satterfield’s second at Cincinnati in four seasons.
It was personal for the Bearcats, who watched last season’s starting quarterback, Brendan Sorsby, leave this offseason via the transfer portal to Texas Tech — though he never played a down for the Red Raiders. Sorsby was suspended following a gambling investigation before mutually parting ways with Texas Tech in June.
Now, Will Hammond and the Red Raiders’ offense must likely win out — with Arizona looming among others — to have a chance at repeating as Big 12 champions and securing an automatic berth into the CFP.
Top of Big 12 standings
|
No. 10 |
Utah |
6-0 |
3-0 |
|
No. 2 |
BYU |
6-1 |
3-1 |
|
No. 8 |
Texas Tech |
6-1 |
3-1 |
|
No. 14 |
Houston |
6-1 |
3-1 |
|
No. 25 |
Arizona |
5-1 |
2-1 |
*Houston-Utah play Saturday’s late game while Arizona hosts Iowa State.
BYU goes down in Orlando
It’s imperative the Big 12’s best don’t bloody each other up over the second half of the season if this league wants multiple teams in the CFP, especially after BYU’s shocking loss at UCF. The selection committee’s new conference strength metric helps contextualize league schedules, including disparities between teams with varied schedule difficulty.
However, only one of the league’s five ranked teams in Week 8 has a strength of schedule ranked inside the top-35 nationally, and that’s going to be part of the discussion when the CFP selection committee meets next weekend. Before Saturday’s loss, BYU sat No. 1 in strength of record and No. 7 in game control, metrics that will come in handy if Kalani Sitake’s team rebounds as the league favorite.
Utah has similar numbers, but the Utes’ strength of schedule, at No. 99, is the worst in the conference. That changes if Utah moves out of Week 8 as the league’s lone unbeaten.
Neither BYU nor Texas Tech should be written out of the bracket conversation after one disastrous afternoon, but their cushion got thinner and the conference’s margin for error followed.
Every CFP contender collecting another loss gives the selection committee another reason to look elsewhere. The Big 12 can sell competitive balance all it wants.
Eventually, somebody has to separate.
Houston at Utah’s significance
Saturday night’s late game at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City provides another glimpse into the league title race exiting Week 8, especially if the Utes can stay undefeated against the Cougars. Houston has won four straight games since an early-season loss at Texas Tech and would move into a multi-team tie for second in the conference behind second-ranked BYU with a victory.
A Utah win gives the Utes the upper hand in the Big 12 conversation ahead of next week’s showdown at Cincinnati before the Nov. 7 showdown with BYU. From Texas Tech’s perspective, the best the Red Raiders can finish is 11-1 overall, and from there, the CFP situation gets interesting for Joey McGuire’s team.
They’ll own the head-to-head advantage over Houston in the event the Cougars end up with a single conference loss, but the league goes to tiebreakers with common opponents if Utah or BYU are the teams tied with Texas Tech at the end of the regular season. Cincinnati plays Utah and Houston back-to-back weeks coming up, so the Bearcats will have a say.
As you can see, the unpredictable Big 12 and its quest to produce multiple playoff teams this season will be decided over the next few weekends, and the combination of Texas Tech and BYU’s losses on Saturday significantly threatens any shot at getting three teams in the final bracket.
