As expected, Texas Tech got a playoff bye after beating BYU, and the Cougars were left out of the field. My main issue is how BYU was treated—not necessarily that it didn’t make the cut. 

Matt Campbell did wind up leaving Iowa State for Penn State, capping a wild Big 12 week on the coaching carousel. 

And now the two teams that took a payday to open the season in Ireland are both opting out of bowl games. 

Here are my five biggest takeaways from the weekend:

BYU Punished by Playoff Committee, Alabama Isn’t 

It comes as no real surprise that BYU finished as the second team out of the College Football Playoff field. 

I don’t agree with it, but the Cougars never seemed to be seriously in the conversation with Alabama, Miami, and Notre Dame for the final two spots over the last week. That’s my biggest beef with the entire process. 

I can understand why some would argue against BYU, even though I disagree. The Cougars didn’t come close to passing the eye test either time they played a surefire playoff team in Texas Tech, and they don’t have a win as good as Alabama’s over Georgia or Miami’s over Notre Dame.

But what they do have is a better strength of schedule and strength of record than Miami and Notre Dame. They also have a better win than anything on Notre Dame’s resume. It’s certainly enough to at least earn them a spot on the graphic comparing at-large candidates.  

It also should have been enough to keep Kirk Herbstreit from doing on camera mental gymnastics to explain why BYU getting blown out in its conference championship game was different than Alabama getting blasted in the SEC title game. 

ESPN and virtually all of the national college football pundits excluded BYU from the conversation before it even got started. They treated the Cougars like they belonged at the kids table while the adults were talking. It was as unfair as it was predictable.

Making matters worse, the committee validated what Herbstreit said during the SEC Championship broadcast. Alabama stayed at #9 after a 21-point conference championship game loss, while BYU dropped from #10 to #11 after a 27-point Big 12 title game loss.

Should I point out that BYU was only down 13-7 late into the third quarter and Bama was in a 21-0 by that point? That certainly wouldn’t fit the national narrative. 

It sets a dangerous precedent: vastly different rules apply to the SEC and Big Ten than the Big 12. 

This is something worth fighting about for Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark. It’s the second straight year that BYU wasn’t even considered for the final playoff spot, despite having a resume better than many of the other contenders. In 2024, BYU even had a road win over the team (SMU) that did take the final spot. 

To Yormark’s credit, he spent the last week publicly campaigning for BYU at multiple press conferences and on TV, but I’d consider a Greg Sankey-esque media blitz this offseason to ensure this type of treatment doesn’t happen again. 

This year has been a step in the right direction. Texas Tech getting a first-round bye is a sign of more respect, as is finishing with teams ranked 4th, 12th, 15th, 17th, and 21st in the playoff rankings. But the treatment of BYU in back-to-back years has been infuriating.  

Texas Tech Gets a GREAT Playoff Draw

Things could not have worked out better for Texas Tech. 

The Red Raiders held onto the #4 seed in the College Football Playoff after hammering BYU, and they got on the opposite side of the bracket as Ohio State and Georgia. 

Indiana’s win over the Buckeyes in the Big Ten championship game vaulted the Hoosiers to the top spot, setting up a potential semifinal game with Tech if both teams can get there. I’d much rather have that path than facing the Bulldogs or Buckeyes in a semifinal. 

Indiana is an excellent football team, don’t get me wrong. They just can’t match the talent profile of Georgia or Ohio State. The 247 talent composite says UGA and OSU have two of the top three most talented rosters in the country, while Indiana checks in at number 72 between Iowa State and Cincinnati. 

To get there, Tech will likely have to deal with Oregon, assuming the Ducks take care of James Madison. That’s no easy task. Every team with a bye in the playoff last year lost its first game, including top seed Oregon, so the Ducks may have an advantage with an easy tune-up game. 

Still, it’s hard to ask for more than a two-game path of Oregon and Indiana for a spot in the national championship game. ESPN’s SP+ rankings have Indiana, Tech, and Oregon as the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ranked teams in the country, meaning SP+ would see those games as virtual toss-ups. That’s as doable as anything I could have imagined for a Big 12 team in the 12-team playoff era. 

Time to go prove the Big 12 haters wrong, Red Raiders. 

Tech and BYU Played the Same Game Again

Yogi Bera once said “it’s deja vu all over again.” That’s how I felt about Texas Tech v. BYU 2.0. 

In both games the Cougars and Red Raiders have played this season, BYU struggled mightily to run the ball, only put together one touchdown drive, easily lost the turnover battle, and Tech settled for far too many field goals to keep the game closer than it could have been. 

The biggest difference in the Arlington rematch was that BYU’s touchdown drive came in the first quarter. The 14-play, 90-yard drive was a thing of beauty, but the Cougars’ offense came to a screeching halt from there.

Though BYU hung around until late in the third quarter, you never got the feeling that the Cougars were a serious threat to win. Once they were down by multiple scores, it was open season for the Tech pass rush to tee off on a hobbled Bear Bachmeier. All four of BYU’s turnovers came in the final 20 minutes of game time. 

Bachmeier’s ankle injury clearly limited his effectiveness, and a couple of key bounces went Tech’s way. Red Raiders TE Terrance Carter fortuitously picked up a J’Koby Williams fumble late in the first half that saved three points, and BYU LB Faletau Satuala nearly had a pick six in the first quarter.

But Texas Tech’s defense is inevitable. It was always coming to spell doom for the Cougars before the clock hit 0:00. 

Speaking of quarterback health, Tech QB Behren Morton wasn’t limping around as much as he had been late in the season. He said after the game he feels about 70%, and a first-round playoff bye should help even more. 

BYU head coach Kalani Sitake repeatedly said after the game that the Red Raiders are the best team in the country. Hopefully a healthier Morton will allow Tech to prove Sitake right. 

Matt Campbell Actually Leaves Iowa State 

After more than a decade of unprecedented success and constant job rumors, Matt Campbell finally left Iowa State to become the head coach at Penn State.

The Nittany Lions’ mess of a coaching search zeroed in on the Big 12 last week. It started with a strong courtship of BYU head coach Kalani Sitake that ended with a monster raise and increased NIL and staffing resources for Sitake in Provo. 

A few days later, Campbell rumors started picking up steam. We finally got confirmation of the move on Friday night when Campbell broke the news to his team. 

It’s been a devastating reality for Cyclones fans to accept, and I can fully understand why. 

Campbell won more games (72) than any coach in school history. He is responsible for the best two seasons all-time at ISU and just finished the best three-year run in program history. Iowa State had never been to a conference championship game, and he took them there twice. 

He turned down multiple job offers, including Florida State, USC, and Tennessee, to stay at Iowa State for a decade, according to Josh Pate. 

In my younger and dumber days, the K-State fan in me scoffed at Campbell’s run of 8-5 and 7-6 seasons. Then Campbell started beating the Wildcats’ brains in every year. He’s an excellent coach that sustained success at a place many deemed it impossible. 

Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard struck the perfect tone in summing up his attitude about Campbell leaving Ames. 

The merits of the rest of Pollard’s recent actions seem up for debate among Cyclones fans. He immediately announced that Iowa State was hiring Washington State head coach Jimmy Rogers. 

Rogers won an FCS national championship at South Dakota State before going 6-6 in his first season at Wazzu. 

Many fans preferred a prolonged, national search. Fans have also delivered waves of criticism about Pollard’s willingness (or lack thereof) to embrace a modern NIL strategy, amid speculation that NIL troubles played a large role in Campbell leaving. 

These are tumultuous time in Ames, even with a basketball team that throttled the number one team in the country on Saturday. 

Rogers might be a great coach, but it’s going to take some time for the deep wounds left by Campbell’s departure to heal for the Cyclones fan base. 

K-State and Iowa State Skip Bowl Games

All of that turmoil in Ames led the Cyclones to be one of many Big 12 teams to turn down bowl games. 

K-State and Iowa State were the only two teams with at least six wins to opt out, which cost both schools $500,000 in fines from the conference. 

Baylor, UCF, and Kansas were among a group of 5-7 teams nationally who also declined bowl bids that became available. 

Admittedly, I don’t seem to care about this issue nearly as much as many of you do, judging by the social media reaction. 

Iowa State players were understandably shocked by Campbell leaving. Many coaches and players will wind up following him to Happy Valley. The Cyclones are the last school to be in the business of giving away large sums of money right now, so I’m sure they felt like they truly couldn’t cobble together a team at this point. 

K-State already had assistant coaches tweeting about needing a new job opportunity after Chris Klieman announced his retirement. Team leaders expressed to the athletics department that they weren’t interested in playing in a bowl game. The Wildcats weren’t going to find enough coaches and players willing to play the game.

While I shrugged my shoulders at first, I do now see some very good points made by fans who are upset by these decisions. It probably does say something about K-State’s locker room culture this year that the team had zero interest in playing again. If I were a major donor, I probably wouldn’t feel good about seeing the athletic department willing to light $500,000 on fire just to avoid playing a game, especially after moving a home game to Ireland for a $1–$2 million payday in August.

But I don’t think it’s fair to place all the blame on the players and administrators. Awful NCAA and college sports leadership for years is what put us in this position. 

Instead of enabling common-sense NIL and transfer policies years ago, the NCAA wouldn’t give an inch until it got sued into oblivion and now has virtually zero control over the money being spent or players transferring. With the portal opening in January, players and coaches looking for their next stop feel like their energy is better spent there than on an increasingly meaningless bowl game, and they’re probably right.

There’s also the expanded College Football Playoff, another thing players had nothing to do with. All anybody in college sports media wants to talk about these days is the playoff. It has created a “playoff or bust” mentality for many Power Four programs. 

How do we expect players to react when they fall short of the only real goal anybody around them is talking about? We’ve set them up to not care. 

Maybe if there were legitimate contracts between the players and the schools, NIL money could be withheld if they don’t participate in a bowl game. That would require schools making the players official employees, which they’re still unwilling to do. So here we are. 

I don’t think this problem is going away, and I’m not alone. It’s only going to get worse in the aftermath of Notre Dame setting the precedent of skipping a bowl after narrowly missing the playoff this year. 

This is a more complicated issue than I think many are making it out to be. Blaming the players is like blaming a dog for barking. It’s a dog, what did you expect? The players are reacting the way anybody would in this environment. 

What You Need to Know

• Anthony Totri of PHNX Sports reports that Arizona State QB Sam Leavitt is heading to the transfer portal. The report comes on the heels of Leavit skipping the ASU football banquet. He could transfer to another Big 12 school, per CBS Sports. 

• Here is the full list of Big 12 bowl games. BYU is playing Georgia Tech in the Pop-Tarts Bowl, but that’s only because Notre Dame turned down an invitation, per On3’s Brett McMurphy.  

• Is Texas Tech a real threat to win the national championship? Here’s what Vegas says.

• We’ve all seen a lot of hype videos, but I guarantee you haven’t seen one quite like this one, created for the Big 12 championship game.

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