You better put some respect on Baylor’s name because Bears are for real

There are a dozen teams left in the mix to make the College Football Playoff and the Baylor Bears are one of them. It’s time to show them some respect.

It’s been an interesting last decade with Baylor Bears football, to say the least. Baylor went from being a Big 12 doormat to having a Heisman Trophy winner, to nearly making the inaugural College Football Playoff, to falling apart at the seams due to scandal, only to re-emerge from the ashes under head coach Matt Rhule in 2019. It’s been a wild ride, but it’s certainly been entertaining.

Entering Week 12 of the 2019 NCAA season, Baylor is one of five undefeated teams left in the Power 5 and one of only 12 teams that are still to some degree alive to reach the College Football Playoff. Though they haven’t beaten a team that was ranked at the time, it’s time for us to show the entire Baylor program some respect. How are they even doing this?

Well, first off, Rhule is one of the best young coaches in football. He won 10 games in back-to-back years with the Temple Owls, including an AAC Conference Championship in 2016. Taking over for stop-gap head coach Jim Grobe in the wake of the Art Briles mess, Rhule only went 1-11 in his first year in Waco in 2017. Last year, his team went 7-6 and won its bowl game. Now, it’s cooking.

Baylor cakewalked through its incredibly weak non-conference schedule of Stephen F. Austin, UTSA and Rice, which will inevitably cost the Bears down the line at some point in the College Football Playoff Selection Committee’s eyes. But in their last six games, the Bears have shown many ways to win ballgames among its Big 12 rivals.

Baylor can win with defense, clawing out nail-biters against well-coached teams like the Iowa State Cyclones and the TCU Horned Frogs. If need be, the Bears can win in a shootout as they did against the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Oklahoma State Cowboys. Even when they play poorly against a rebuilding West Virginia Mountaineers team, the Bears still find a way to win.

Through nine games, the best win on Baylor’s resume was a 31-12 thrashing of Chris Klieman’s Kansas State Wildcats in Manhattan. Though K-State fell out of the top-25 with its latest defeat, the Wildcats are still one of the better teams in the Big 12 this season. While Baylor may be seen as unproven up to this point, the Bears will have their big moment coming up on Saturday.

ESPN’s College GameDay will be in Waco, as the Bears will host another serious College Football Playoff contender out of the Big 12 in the Oklahoma Sooners. The winner of this game under the bright lights of McLane Stadium on Saturday night will be in the driver’s seat in the Big 12, poised to make the Playoff as a conference champion or at the very least, play in the Sugar Bowl.

One would think that this game between the Sooners and the Bears will serve as the precursor to the Big 12 Championship game being played in Arlington during Championship Weekend. It’s so hard to beat the same team twice in a season, but that is what it will probably take for the Bears to reach the Playoff. They have to win in Arlington and will have to sweep Oklahoma to get in.

But outside of doing a Texas two-step on the Sooners, will that be enough to get Baylor into the top-four? A win at home vs. the Texas Longhorns could help, as would Iowa State, Kansas State or Oklahoma State finishing the year in the top-25. Beating the Kansas Jayhawks in Lawrence won’t do much to help them, but is a necessary victory if the Bears want to reach a national semifinal.

Overall, Baylor does control its own destiny but has to hope for some degree of chaos in the other Power 5 or the Selection Committee to change its perception on the Big 12 as a whole by early December. Baylor may very well be one of the 10 best teams in college football this season but has four weeks left to prove its worth. For now, we should respect what it’s done to get to 9-0.

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