The Big 12 Lands a Bye

All’s well that ends well for the Big 12. Arizona State got the four seed and a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff, where they await the winner of Clemson at Texas in the Peach Bowl on New Year’s Day.  

Sunday turned into a celebratory day for fans of the sport outside of the SEC. Teams that were rewarded by the selection committee and the new playoff format include a Group of Five team (Boise State), a former AAC team (SMU), and a team picked 16th in the Big 12 this year (Arizona State). 

It’s driving the SEC propaganda machine nuts. 

They’re missing the point, though. And I’ll explain why after some headlines.

What You Need to Know

• UCF is bringing back Scott Frost. The Knights officially announced the hire on Sunday. Frost led UCF to a 13-0 season in 2017 before leaving for Nebraska, where he was 16-31 overall and 10-26 in the Big Ten over five seasons. I have some strong thoughts on this that I’ll give you later this week. Frost knows how to give everyone a hell of a quote; I’ll give him that. 

• Oklahoma State flirted with firing head coach Mike Gundy for cause, but the two sides agreed on an amended contract instead. The Athletic reports that Gundy is expected to be taking less money. 

• 247 Sports reports that Utah QB Cam Rising isn’t expected to return to Utah in 2025. It’s unclear if he will try to play another year of college football or head to the NFL. 

• Cincinnati DT Dontay Corleone announced that he will return to play for the Bearcats in 2025. That’s huge news for one of the Big 12’s best defensive linemen. He picked up first-team All-Big 12 honors this season. 

• Nine Big 12 teams made bowl games, headlined by an intraconference match-up between Colorado and BYU in the Alamo Bowl. Previous Pac-12 tie-ins were used to pick the Buffaloes to play a Big 12 representative.

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Ain’t No Fun When the Rabbit Got the Gun

Send a Christmas card to Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney for finding a way to hang on to beat SMU. Without that, we’d be left lamenting the merits of Boise State’s resume compared to the Sun Devils, with ASU having to play in the first round.

Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham didn’t mince words when declaring his team worthy of a first-round bye. 

I do think Boise has a slightly easier opponent in Penn State or SMU than Texas, who is an early 11-point favorite over Clemson. But I’d be much more upset if we were talking about the difference between a bye and playing a first-round road game. 

Texas hasn’t beaten a team with a record better than 8-4 this year, but they just went toe-to-toe with Georgia and have one of the top defenses in the country. 

I also worry about some personnel hits that the Sun Devils have taken. They’ll be without their second-best offensive weapon, receiver Jordan Tyson, for the rest of the season. They also lost their best defensive player, Shamari Simmons, for the first half of the Peach Bowl after he got tossed out of the Big 12 championship game for targeting, thanks to this vicious hit. 

The good news is that Dillingham has four weeks to figure out a plan to neutralize both losses. His strategy to work around Tyson’s absence in the Big 12 championship game worked brilliantly, though he took advantage of one of the conference’s worst run defenses in the process. He won’t have that luxury in Atlanta. 

The Sun Devils rushed for 248 yards and nearly seven yards per carry against the Cyclones. Running back Cam Skattebo had over 200 total yards and three touchdowns. He may have punched his ticket to New York for the Heisman ceremony with his performance. You can see why in this highlight reel. 

SEC fans, pundits, coaches, and administrators have spent the last 36 hours whining incessantly about the league only getting three teams in. Tennessee also won’t host a game, as it got saddled with the nine seed. 

It’s wild to see so many spoiled SEC fans act like this the first time something doesn’t go their way. 

Alabama AD Greg Byrne is threatening to pull any competitive non-conference games from future Bama schedules. That’s ironic, considering the Crimson Tide lost out to SMU for the final at-large spot because of two embarrassing losses to 6-6 SEC teams, not tough non-cons. 

Droves of SEC wonks call it “unfair” that Alabama was left out despite losing three games, including two losses to 6-6 teams, one of which came in blowout fashion. 

It’s “unfair” that Boise State and Arizona State get first-round byes despite being ranked below Texas and Tennessee in the actual College Football Playoff rankings. 

It’s “unfair” that Ole Miss is left out of the field, even though Josh Pate says coaches around the country are exhaling because they don’t have to worry about a roster with that much talent. 

It’s funny that they seem to be missing the reality that college football has ALWAYS been unfair. They’re just not used to the inequity affecting them. 

For decades, this sport crowned its national champion via a vote from media members and coaches. How fair is that? You’re subject to incredible biases from all corners of the sport during an era when there wasn’t a YouTube TV quad box to watch every game on Saturdays. 

Then, college football let a computer spit out some numbers to decide who got to play for a national championship. Does that seem fair?

Ask Oklahoma State how fair it was that the computer overlords picked Alabama to play LSU for the 2011 national championship instead of the Cowboys. 

Ask TCU fans how fair the sport was when they dropped from 3 to 6 in the final College Football Playoff rankings of the 2014 season after beating Iowa State 55-3 in their final game. 

For decades, no scholarship limits allowed perennial powers like Nebraska and Oklahoma to stockpile second-and third-tier players to keep them from regional rivals. It was a cheat code to consolidate power in the sport. How fair was college football then?

College football has always been slanted toward the big brands in an inherently unfair way. The spoiled rich kids (SEC fans, media, etc.) of the sport just aren’t used to it affecting them negatively. 

Ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun. 

Will the SEC get the last laugh on this? Of course they will. Czar Sankey is already hard at work trying to change the format. Whether it turns into re-seeding after the first round, four guaranteed bids for the SEC and Big Ten, or even the SEC and Big Ten pulling away to do their own thing, expect that to happen by 2026. 

But for one day, it was a victory for everyone else. That’s so rare throughout the long history of college football that you might as well celebrate and embrace it while you can.

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