Baylor’s 38-27 win over Kansas State could still leave Bears short of playoff
We’re about to find out if Baylor’s win over TCU is enough to get the Bears into the College Football Playoff. But given what happened in Indianapolis, it may not even matter at all.
Baylor, sitting at No. 6 in the rankings for the playoff, beat No. 9 Kansas State 38-27 on Saturday in Waco, Texas. The win gives the Bears an 11-1 regular season record and a share of the Big 12 championship with TCU.
The Horned Frogs, as you likely know by now, are ahead of the Bears at No. 3 in the rankings despite a 61-58 loss to Baylor on October 11.
While the conference states that head-to-head is used as a tiebreaker atop the standings, it’s only for bowls outside of the College Football Playoff. The two teams are being recognized as co-champions.
Selection committee chairman Jeff Long has said the October 11 win by Baylor hasn’t come into play between the two teams in the weekly rankings because the teams hadn’t played comparable schedules. While TCU played the stronger teams in the Big 12 in the first two-thirds of its schedule, Baylor finished the season with the Wildcats, who entered Saturday with the chance to get to 10 wins.
Ninety-five seconds in, Baylor had the lead. And it was one that it never relinquished. Kansas State twice pulled to within a touchdown but a 58-yard pass from Bryce Petty to Antwan Goodley in the third quarter put Baylor up two possessions for good.
With the win over Kansas State, both Baylor and TCU have now played identical conference schedules plus a non-conference game against SMU. The two teams’ resumés are as equally weighted as they’ll get.
However, there’s now an Ohio State problem. Ever since the committee’s weekly rankings began, the Big 12’s lack of a championship game was seen as a possible positive. Without the title game, the Big 12 had the opportunity for its top teams to finish the season with wins and take advantage of any upsets in conference championship games.
But there were no upsets on Friday and Saturday and as Baylor was beating KSU, the Buckeyes thoroughly dominated No. 13 Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten Championship game in Indy. There’s now a chance that the fight for the highest-ranked Big 12 team could be a battle for fifth.
At first, it sounds like a preposterous scenario. But we don’t know just how much the committee will value conference championship games. And not only was it a Big Ten demolition, Ohio State did it with preseason third-string quarterback Cardale Jones too and showed, albeit in a limited sample size, that there was no dropoff after a season-ending injury to J.T. Barrett.
For Baylor to get in to the playoff, it had to pass Ohio State. If the Buckeyes struggled against Wisconsin, jumping Baylor over the Buckeyes would seem logical given Barrett’s absence, forcing a direct comparison with TCU for a spot in the top four.
But even if a move over TCU because of the head-to-head win is seen as logical now, a Baylor jump over Ohio State is illogical, as teams don’t usually drop immediately after blowout wins against top-15 opponents, no matter if it’s in a conference title game or in September. The Big 12’s lack of a title game suddenly has a very real chance at turning into a negative.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
