The Big 12 is pretty much done in the College Football Playoff race, and a single game hasn’t yet been played in the month of November. How did this happen? How did the Big 12 get here? To an extent, the answers are obvious on a very general level, but they need to be split into some more precise explanations.
Oklahoma Couldn’t Get The Job Done Out Of Conference
The Oklahoma Sooners are 5-0 in the Big 12, something they haven’t done in a while. Why are they out of the playoff picture? They’ve lost twice in non-conference games. The sad and regrettable part of the story for OU is that it didn’t even need to win both its high-profile non-league games. Had Oklahoma merely split with Houston and Ohio State, it would have a legitimate chance of making the playoff with an 11-1 record as Big 12 champion. Instead, they lost by double-digits to Houston in the opening week of the season (33-23) and then lost by 21 at home to Ohio State (45-24). What’s worse is that both of those teams have tailed off since. Had Houston and Ohio State still been deemed as top contenders, that might change the picture. However, Houston has already lost twice – to Navy and SMU, no less – and Ohio State has one loss and a two close calls. That’s a concern.
Getting back to Oklahoma, with two losses, though, they have to stand in the back of the line behind various one-loss teams. The OU loss to Houston looks especially bad in light of how the Cougars have tumbled, but Ohio State isn’t playing well right now, either.
Turnovers
The West Virginia Mountaineers were sailing along with an unbeaten record, until they ran into Oklahoma State, a team which wins when it wins the turnover battle. West Virginia’s top priority was to not give the ball to OSU in a road game, but that’s exactly what the Mountaineers did. Quarterback Skyler Howard struggled through much of 2015, and what had changed in 2016 was not anything spectacular; it was the simple reality that he avoided making bad plays. Saturday against Oklahoma State, Howard slipped into bad habits and made poor reads. Oklahoma State won a game by 17 points, having scored those extra points off WVU’s turnovers. Now West Virginia is like the rest of the Big 12, dinged by at least one loss.
Baylor’s Summer of Scandal
Baylor might win the rest of its games and go 11-1, but the Bears picked up so many embarrassing public relations scars over the past several months that the College Football Playoff would probably not give Baylor the benefit of the doubt in a close playoff race with another at-large team. It would be a very uncomfortable situation for the playoff committee to invite Baylor to the playoff when another reasonable choice existed. Baylor needed to go 12-0 to force the committee’s hand, but Saturday’s loss to Texas blew up that possibility. Oklahoma actually has a better chance than Baylor, but OU’s chances are basically nil. The league needs a miracle at this point.
Imbalanced Rosters
This is a league-wide dynamic. Let’s take a look at some examples.
-Kansas State and TCU lack good quarterbacks but have decent defenses. The Wildcats only mustered a total of 30 points in their two games against ranked teams this season (while giving up 64).
-Texas Tech has the quarterback but not the defense. Their defense only allowed 24 points last week in a double-overtime loss to TCU but that was their lowest number in a month. To paint the picture a little better, Texas Tech has allowed 41.4 points per game this season.
-Iowa State has a running game but not a defense. They’ve allowed at least 25 points in all but one of their games this season. That probably explains why they are 1-8 on the year.
-Oklahoma has the skill players, but its offensive line got mashed by Houston and Ohio State up front.
There’s simply no complete team in the league. Everyone has a weakness. That’s why the Big 12 is in such awful shape with a full month of football left to play this season.
