Playoff Problems

I have good news and bad news for you, Open For Business readers. 

The good news is that we saw a wildly entertaining Saturday of Big 12 football and more of the same is on tap this week. I’d argue there isn’t a conference in America with more compelling drama unfolding at the moment. 

The bad news is, it’s all coming at the expense of the best-case Big 12 playoff scenarios. The league is legitimately at risk of not landing a first-round bye and has little room for error to avoid missing the playoff entirely. 

The Big 12 title race is still extremely wide open, and I don’t have the time or space to outline every scenario, but eight teams are still alive for a spot in Arlington. 

If you want to know exactly what your team has to do to get in, you can find the answers you need right here. 

Let’s get down to the good, the bad, and the ugly from week thirteen.

Week Thirteen: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good

Devin Freaking Neal

Is there anybody in the league you’d be more scared to play than Kansas right now? 

The Jayhawks made history in their 37-21 thumping of #16 Colorado at Arrowhead Stadium. They are the only team in NCAA history with a losing record to win three straight games against ranked opponents.

KU pummeled Colorado on the ground. They rushed for 333 yards and had over 40 minutes of possession time. The only stop the Colorado defense got was on KU’s final possession. 

That meant Kansas didn’t punt, which ruined a 31-hour flight for some unlucky fans (check out this story).  

Kansas fans finally got what they wanted from much-maligned offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes: he force-fed running back Devin Neal the rock early and often. 

Neal had 287 total yards – 207 rushing and 80 receiving – and four touchdowns on 41(!) touches. It was a fitting final home game in a legendary Kansas career for the Jayhawks’ all-time leading rusher. 

A Lawrence native, Neal chose to stay home four years ago when Kansas was mired in arguably the worst decade of power five football we’ve ever seen. He could have gone to the NFL last year but opted to stick around for a run at the College Football Playoff. 

That’s not going to happen, but you have to feel good that Neal is getting this moment in the spotlight after a brutal first two months of the season. 

DJ Giddens’ Return to Form

Speaking of Big 12 running backs in Kansas, K-State’s DJ Giddens looked as healthy as he has been in weeks on Saturday in Manhattan. 

Giddens gashed Cincinnati for 143 yards on 9.5 yards per carry, his highest rushing total since the Colorado game on October 12th. 

It started early and often against the Bearcats. Last week against Arizona State, Giddens came alive in the second half once the Sun Devils changed their defensive strategy to protect a three-score lead. He was firing on all cylinders from the first snap in this one. 

Giddens has an NFL career ahead of him; the question is when that will start. He addressed his future after Saturday’s win.

It helped Giddens that quarterback Avery Johnson also had his best day on the ground in nearly a month. Johnson rushed for 72 yards on ten carries and was a much more willing and explosive runner than what had become the norm in November.

Both Johnson and Giddens have dealt with health issues in the stretch run of the season, but now they may be turning a corner. 

That’s bad news for an Iowa State defense with a laundry list of injuries at linebacker. While the Wildcats need a plethora of help to get back into the Big 12 title picture, ruining Iowa State’s chances would be a nice consolation prize this Saturday.

The Big 12 Giving Out Tiebreaker Info

I’m old enough to remember when the Big 12 had tiebreaker issues. 

Last year, the league bungled through changing its tiebreaker policy late in the season, partly because of a poorly worded sentence that left everybody scratching their heads. 

Those days are long gone! Shout out to Clark Williams, Scott Draper, and anybody else at the league office involved in sending out a tiebreaker update on Sunday to get everybody on the same page. 

There are way too many scenarios to lay them all out here, but here are the basics:

If Iowa State and Arizona State win, they’re almost guaranteed a spot in the Big 12 championship game. BYU needs a K-State or Arizona win to get there, and Colorado needs losses from two of the three other teams tied for first. 

All three-loss teams need at least three of the four teams tied for first to lose. 

There's a great cheat sheet here if you want to drill down on the specific scenarios for your team. 

CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd says the league told him an eight-way tie for first is still possible, and 256 possibilities exist if that happens. 

It’s enough to make your head spin but also enough to make you tune in this weekend. 

There’s more bad than good with the mega-conferences that realignment has created. Still, the tiebreakers associated with a 16-team league have made the final weekend of the regular season as fascinating as ever.

The Bad

Big 12 Playoff Trouble

Saturday was a day when everything we love about college football was on full display. Seven of the top 20 teams in the College Football Playoff poll lost, sending the playoff picture into complete chaos. 

But with BYU and Colorado a part of the madness, the Big 12 is in serious playoff trouble. 

If Boise State were included in the barrage of upsets, which they almost were at 2-8 Wyoming, I’d feel a lot better. The Broncos will likely stay in front of every Big 12 team in Tuesday’s College Football Playoff rankings after escaping Laramie with a 17-13 win. That means they’re on track to lock down the four seed and a first-round bye in the playoff. 

In that scenario, the Big 12 champion will likely head to Ohio State or Oregon for a first-round road playoff game. 

That’s not even the worst-case scenario. 

Tulane pummeled Navy 35-0 on Saturday, which should move them up from #20 in the playoff rankings. If the Big 12 champion is a three-loss team, which is possible if there’s more chaos on the horizon, the Green Wave could join Boise as a Group of Five champion ranked ahead of the Big 12 champ. 

That would mean the Big 12 gets left out of the playoff entirely. 

This shouldn't be an issue if Arizona State, Iowa State, or BYU win out. Tulane also has two losable games left with Memphis and the AAC title game on deck. 

But if you’re looking for a break from the family on Thursday, flip on the Memphis-Tulane game and root for the Tigers. You should also keep an eye on the Boise State-Oregon State on Friday. 

It’s maddening that a one-loss Boise State team with a strength of schedule in the 80s, whose best win is Washington State (who just lost to New Mexico, by the way), has the upper hand on two-loss Big 12 teams, but that’s our current reality.

Here’s a deeper dive on why it’s so ridiculous. 

Colorado Too Full of Themselves? 

Love them or hate them, there’s no denying that Colorado missing the playoff is a missed opportunity for the Big 12.

They command a massive TV number every week and are a huge draw to casual fans who otherwise wouldn’t pay attention to the Big 12. It’s a blow to the conference that the Buffaloes' loss to Kansas ended any serious chance for them to make the field.

Did all that extra attention doom Coach Prime’s team in the end? He sure seems to think so.

I’m sure there’s something to that. The closer they got to Arlington, the more people started talking playoff from all corners of the college football world.  

You can see the attitude Prime is referring to in this clip from Senior Quality Control Analyst Warren Sapp (yes, that Warren Sapp) before the KU game. 

At the same time, Prime’s team ran into a buzzsaw. That wasn’t a close loss – Kansas walloped Colorado. Would a change in attitude have made a two-touchdown difference? I’m not convinced. Robert Livingston’s defense needed more than an attitude adjustment to tackle Devin Neal. 

The Buffs still have a shot at the Big 12 championship game, so I don’t think motivation will be an issue this week. But it will be a unique challenge for this team to gear up for a game in which they’re playing a last-place team and not in control of their own destiny. 

Utah’s Closing Ability

Utah added another excruciating chapter to a particularly excruciating season with Saturday’s 31-28 loss to Iowa State.

After taking the lead with 5:51 left in the game, the Utes gave up a 10-play 75-yard touchdown drive to the Cyclones, culminating in one of the gutsiest play calls you’ll ever see. 

Five of Utah’s last six losses are by a touchdown or less – including losing on last-second field goals to BYU and Houston.

Head coach Kyle Whittingham has managed to keep his team competitive despite a slew of injuries at key positions like quarterback, but they just can’t get over the hump. The preseason conference favorite will finish the season without a conference home win.

With a bowl game off the table, questions now understandably turn toward Whittingham’s future. Utah has already named defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley its head coach in waiting. Is now the time to hit the reset button on the program after a legendary run from a future Hall of Famer?

It’s already been a rough fall on the recruiting trail for Whittingham. Four-star offensive tackle commitment Aaron Dunn flipped to USC in October, and the Utes got more bad news yesterday. 

I’m not writing a coach as accomplished as Whittingham off, but it will be a fascinating offseason in Salt Lake City.

The Ugly

Defense Optional in Stillwater

Somebody took the DeLorean back to 2013 in Stillwater on Saturday.

Oklahoma State and Texas Tech combined for 104 points and over 1,000 yards of offense in a 56-48 Red Raider victory that looked like the Big 12 of old. 

The stars were out for Tech – quarterback Behren Morton threw for 404 yards, and running back Tahj Brooks rushed for 133 yards. They each accounted for four touchdowns. 

The win keeps Tech’s slim Big 12 championship hopes alive and gives head coach Joey McGuire a shot at the first eight-win regular season in Lubbock since the Mike Leach era. 

In an otherwise forgettable Oklahoma State season, freshman quarterback Maealiuaki Smith's performance gave the Cowboys reason for optimism about the future. He threw for 326 yards and two touchdowns in his first career start. 

Running back Ollie Gordon also flashed back to his 2023 self with 156 yards and three touchdowns rushing. 

The Pokes are still mired in an eight-game losing streak and on the verge of Mike Gundy’s first winless conference season. Don’t expect Gundy to hang it up on this note, though. 

Kenny Dillingham Overcoaching

Before I get critical, let me be clear: Kenny Dillingham is the Big 12 Coach of the Year. He’s a rising star and had his team firing on all cylinders for much of Saturday’s win over BYU. 

He’s the perfect coach for this era of college football, as evidenced by quotes like this. 

Having said that, he needs to rethink his end-of-game strategy. 

Instead of scoring with 58 seconds left to go up by 12, he had quarterback Sam Leavitt run 36 yards backward on two straight plays to kill time. With seven seconds left on fourth down, Leavitt heaved the ball in the air as high as he could to kill the rest of the clock. 

One problem, though. The ball landed with a second left. 

It took over fifteen minutes to clear the fans off the field after they stormed it, thinking the game was already over. Dillingham absolutely went off on the officials, which was a bad look. 

He’s extremely fortunate that he didn’t get hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and that the referees didn’t call intentional grounding on Leavitt. If they had, BYU’s Hail Mary would have come from the ASU 36-yard line instead of the BYU 49. 

Dillingham found a crafty way to burn extra clock against K-State last week, and I love that he’s looking for things like this to give his team an extra edge. He coached under Dan Lanning at Oregon, who found a clever way to gain a crucial edge on Ohio State earlier this season. 

But this wasn’t it, as the kids say. He was overthinking it. The good news is he’s already owned up to it.

It was a minor mistake from a guy who has nailed all the major things beyond anyone’s wildest imagination this year.

Prefer Big 12 news in video form? Subscribe to my YouTube Channel and join the hundreds of Big 12 fans who watch live on Wednesday and Sunday nights. The channel has 20,000+ subscribers and counting from all across the college football world. Don’t miss out!