At-Large Dreams Dying?

Week ten in the Big 12 played right into the stereotype of the league. It was wild and unpredictable, with two teams in the Big 12 title hunt losing in major upsets.

Just days ago, I felt great about the conference's position, with two unbeaten teams and two other teams with legitimate playoff hopes. Now, it feels like a long shot for the Big 12 to get anything beyond the automatic bid for the conference champion.

Is this just a league with a bunch of decent, entertaining teams and nobody great at the top, as the haters will tell you? BYU still has plenty of say in the matter, but it was a vindicating week for the group that pins that label on the Big 12. 

Tiebreaker scenarios continue to be convoluted. BYU, Iowa State, K-State, Texas Tech, Colorado, West Virginia, Arizona State, and Cincinnati fans should spend plenty of time with this Big 12 tiebreaker tracker. You can fill out results for the rest of the conference games, and it will tell you who finishes where.

Let’s dive into everything we saw this week across the league in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

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

The Good

Texas Tech’s Resiliency 

The 2024 Texas Tech football season has been a wild ride. 

The Red Raiders started the year in a hole after playing disastrous defense against Abilene Christian and Washington State. They battled back to win four straight and restore Big 12 title hopes. Then came back-to-back losses to rivals Baylor and TCU and an espionage investigation. 

The roller coaster is on its way back up after Tech knocked off #11 Iowa State. It’s the highest-ranked opponent the Red Raiders have beaten since 2012. 

You can hear just how much it means to head coach Joey McGuire in this must-see interview with ESPN after the game. 

This one took guts. Iowa State got the home crowd rocking with a go-ahead touchdown pass with 2:11 left in the game, but Red Raiders’ quarterback Behren Morton engineered a 12-play 71-yard touchdown drive. Tech overcame three false start penalties and converted a 4th and seven to make it happen.  

Say what you will about the Red Raiders, but they’ve been tough in close games. Texas Tech is now 5-1 in one-score games. If you don’t blow them out, they will likely break your heart. 

The win in Ames sets up a monster showdown with Colorado in Lubbock next week. Both teams are very much alive in the Big 12 championship and College Football Playoff races. It should be one of the best games of the Big 12 season. So much for the narrative that there aren’t enough important Big 12 games in November. 

Willie Fritz’s Program Building

Ever since Willie Fritz was hired at Houston, I’ve been screaming from the mountaintops that he will be a problem for the rest of the league. 

You’re now seeing why. 

After a brutal start to Big 12 play that included back-to-back shutout losses, the Cougars have won three of four. Their upset of #17 K-State was the program’s first win over a ranked opponent in three years.

A key component of the turnaround has been the switch to Zeon Chriss at quarterback. Chriss shocked TCU and led the Coogs to an upset win in Ft. Worth. He’s been the guy ever since, minus an injury at Kansas. It’s probably not a coincidence that was the only game Houston has lost since Chriss took over. 

He completed all 11 passes against K-State and scored two crucial second-half touchdowns to put the Cougars over the top. 

Houston has been strong defensively all year – a hallmark for Wille Fritz-coached teams – and Saturday's defensive game plan worked brilliantly. The Cougars’ secondary sat back without sending pressure and forced Wildcats quarterback Avery Johnson to throw into tight windows for much of the day. 

The success of that strategy was amplified by the heavy rain both teams dealt with. It neutralized K-State’s advantage of having a much more developed passing game. 

Meanwhile, Houston held one of the nation’s best rushing attacks to just three yards per carry and under 100 total yards. 

It was a coaching masterclass from Fritz, who has won at every level of college football. He will be a headache for Big 12 opponents for years to come.

Colorado’s Best Bye Week Ever

When was the last time somebody had a bye week that went as well as Colorado’s? 

A November bye week is always a good thing. Everybody has plenty of bumps and bruises two-thirds of the way through the season, and Colorado is no different. It will undoubtedly help Travis Hunter, who has been dealing with a shoulder injury. 

It also gave Hunter and Coach Prime some time to go fishing. 

But that’s not why I’m writing about this. While the Buffs were resting, their Big 12 title game competition was losing. 

K-State and Iowa State going down cleared a path for Colorado to get to Arlington. If CU wins out, the worst it can do is tie for second in the Big 12 standings. 

If Colorado is tied with Iowa State, the first consequential tiebreaker would be record against common opponents: Baylor, UCF, K-State, Cincinnati, Texas Tech, Utah, and Kansas. 

Both teams already have one loss against that group, so we move to the next tiebreaker: record against the highest-placed common conference opponent. That could be K-State, Cincinnati, or Texas Tech, so it’s tough to know now if this would be the decisive tiebreaker. 

If that doesn’t settle it, we come to the conference opponents' conference record. Right now, Iowa State has a sizeable lead. 

CU: 19-32 (37%)

ISU: 24-26 (48%)

There’s way too much to sort out to give a specific step-by-step Colorado path, but if the Buffaloes win out, they have a good chance of making it to Arlington. 

And it all opened up while they were gone fishin’. 

If you want to play with Big 12 tiebreakers to see who comes out on top, you can use this great tool to figure out who wins in different scenarios. 

Cam Skattebo Outgains Oklahoma State

There’s only one stat you need to know from Arizona State’s win in Stillwater:

ASU RB Cam Skattebo total yards – 274

Oklahoma State total yards – 271

Skattebo had a historic day for the Sun Devils, becoming the first player at ASU since 2015 to have 100+ yards rushing and receiving in the same game. He’s now the Big 12 leader in all-purpose yards with 162 per game. 

Oklahoma State was within striking distance when a two-and-a-half-hour weather delay interrupted the game, but ASU cruised in the second half. The Sun Devils converted 10 of 16 third downs en route to 529 yards of total offense. They also had nearly 39 minutes of time of possession. 

After being picked last in the Big 12 preseason poll, ASU head coach Kenny Dillingham’s team remains in the Big 12 title race into the second week of November. They have two very winnable games left against UCF and Arizona and two tough tests against K-State and BYU. 

No matter what happens the rest of the way, the Sun Devils are bowl eligible for the first time since 2019. Dillingham probably won’t win Big 12 Coach of the Year, but he should be in the conversation. 

Meanwhile, after a sixth straight loss, things are still a mess for Mike Gundy and the Cowboys. 

The Bad

Big 12 At-Large Playoff Chances Plummet

It was a huge weekend for Texas Tech and Houston. Red Raider and Cougar fans should never apologize for winning, and what they accomplished on Saturday is worthy of a hearty celebration. 

But their wins were objectively bad for the Big 12’s chances at getting two teams into the College Football Playoff. 

Iowa State didn’t even crack the top ten of the AP poll before losing to unranked Texas Tech. It’s hard to imagine a world in which two-loss ISU makes the top twelve of the playoff rankings at the end of the year. 

K-State wasn’t likely to get an at-large bid with two losses either, but there was at least a chance that a close loss to unbeaten BYU in the Big 12 championship game would have put them in contention. The Wildcats' loss also takes a bit of shine off of a potential Iowa State win over the Cats in Ames on November 30th. 

With all of the other carnage in college football this weekend, the Wildcats and Cyclones winning on Saturday would have positioned the league to possibly get three teams into the top 12 of the first College Football Playoff rankings, which will be released on Tuesday. Now, there will only be one. 

The Big 12’s best bet at getting an at-large team in right now is a 12-1 BYU team that loses a tight Big 12 title game, ala 2022 TCU. 

There is also now a significant risk that the Big 12 champion will be ranked below the top Group of Five champ, meaning the league will not get a first-round bye. Boise State is already a top-15 team. It will get tricky if they keep winning, and the Big 12 title winner is anything other than undefeated BYU.

Finishing behind a Group of Five champ in the first year of the expanded playoff would really damage the league's image and reputation. 

There is plenty of football left to be played. Melting down right now is far too premature. But I’m definitely concerned about how it will all play out.

Dave Aranda Haters

Don’t look now, but Baylor head coach Dave Aranda may keep his job after all. 

It felt like there was no coming back from losing at Colorado on a Hail Mary, especially after Aranda admitted the defensive play call was named “victory cigar.” By the time the Bears went down in Ames, they were 2-4 with nine straight losses to power four opponents. 

Three wins later, quarterback Sawyer Robertson leads one of the league’s most exciting offenses. After putting 37 on rival TCU, the Bears are averaging 45 points per game during the winning streak. 

Running back Bryson Washington was the star of the show on Saturday, racking up 196 yards and four touchdowns rushing, and Isaiah Hankins was the hero after kicking a game-winning 33-yard field goal as time expired. 

The TCU win was extra sweet for the fans in Waco. It snapped a four-game losing streak to the Horned Frogs, who are now all but eliminated from Big 12 title contention. A win would have put TCU back into the conversation. 

The last-second field goal also seemed fitting after TCU kept its dream season alive with a wild game-winning field goal the last time these two teams played in Waco. 

Aranda is probably going to make a bowl game. Baylor finishes with West Virginia, Houston, and Kansas – all winnable, given how the Bears are playing right now. 

Combine that momentum with Roberson and Washington set to return (pending any portal poaching), I’d imagine that will be enough to get Aranda another year. 

The Ugly

K-State’s Self-Inflicted Wounds

K-State’s 24-19 loss to Houston should stick with Wildcat fans for a while.

You can easily single out eight points K-State left on the board because of costly, glaring mistakes. 

The most obvious issues started on special teams, where the Wildcats missed an extra point and a field goal because of bad snaps. It got so bad that K-State swapped long snappers in the second half. 

Similar to the BYU game, not punching in an early touchdown came back to haunt the Wildcats. A missed block on a first down run in the red zone was the only thing that kept quarterback Avery Johnson out of the end zone. Two plays later, Johnson didn’t see a wide-open tight end and threw instead to receiver Jayce Brown, who was out of bounds. K-State salvaged a field goal but left four points on the board. 

But despite all of that, the Wildcats had control of the game with 12:32 left and a nine-point lead. The weather had devolved into “playing football in a dishwasher,” in the words of play-by-play broadcaster Jason Beneti. Houston’s offense had managed just 46 yards on its previous six drives. All K-State had to do was run the ball three times and punt it back to Houston the rest of the way, and the Cougars were unlikely to be able to score twice to win. 

Instead, the Wildcats had Johnson throw a slant into traffic that was intercepted and run back to the KSU nine-yard line. It turned into a touchdown, which was the spark Houston needed to win. 

Head coach Chris Klieman defended the move after the game. 

It’s a tough stance to defend when the Wildcats went run, run, short dump down pass on their next possession in a two-point game. They only seemed scared to throw the ball in the rain after the critical mistake. 

All credit to Houston head coach Willie Fritz and his team. They earned the win, no doubt. But there are plenty of things that were in K-State’s control that will haunt the Wildcats over the upcoming bye week. 

UCF Did What To Arizona??

Things couldn’t have gone much better for UCF in the Knights' 56-12 win over Arizona. 

They took out some frustration from a disappointing season with an easy win and may have found a quarterback of the future. Freshman Dylan Rizk lit up the Arizona secondary for 294 yards and three touchdowns passing. 

Getting bowl-eligible will still be an uphill climb, and nobody associated with UCF would be satisfied with that anyway. But for one day, all was good at the Bounce House. 

The real story here seems to be the bottom completely falling out of Arizona's season. The Wildcats have lost five straight, and the 56 points they allowed to UCF are the most Arizona has given up in a game in four years. 

"It's totally unacceptable, and we need to coach better and go through everything and get back to finding how we can execute in all three phases and play some clean football,” Arizona head coach Brent Brennan said. “We did not do that tonight in any way.”

We’ve seen quotes like that from Brennan before. Nothing seems to be changing for the better. 

Arizona’s defense is beat up, but allowing a Hail Mary touchdown on the final play of the first half is inexcusable. So is allowing 602 yards of offense – injuries or not. 

The offense may have been worse. The Wildcats rushed for only five yards the entire game and gave up ten tackles for loss. 

Arizona isn’t a school that can handle a $10 million buyout even if they wanted to make a change after only one year with Brennan, but I imagine we will see significant staff changes before next season.

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