RIP to the Big 12’s College Football Playoff hopes and dreams

Oklahoma State football losing means there will be no College Football Playoff for the Big 12.

The Big 12 won’t get a team into the College Football Playoff after Oklahoma State football’s loss.

Admittedly, the Big 12’s playoff chances had been on life support for weeks, but seeing its two best teams fall in the first two windows on Saturday means the conference champion goes to the Cotton Bowl. The No. 16 Kansas State Wildcats lost to the West Virginia Mountaineers in Morgantown, while the No. 6 Oklahoma State Cowboys lost at home to the Texas Longhorns.

Conference cannibalization, bad non-conference games sealed the Big 12’s fate

We had a feeling Mike Gundy’s Cowboys would drop a dumb game in conference play before the end of the season. Sadly, the Pokes did everything in their power to give this game to Texas. They turned the ball over four times and had at least four awful self-inflicted penalties. Because they couldn’t stop beating themselves, it was only a matter of time before they lost to Texas.

While Texas is still not back yet, the Longhorns are still alive to get to the Big 12 Conference Championship game, even with two conference losses. Every team in the Big 12 has now lost, every team in the Big 12 has a conference loss and every Big 12 team but Oklahoma State has at least two losses on the season. Kansas State and Iowa State have one conference loss as well.

Though a few teams may go undefeated during the regular season to put themselves in playoff positioning, Oklahoma State not only put the Big 12 further behind the curve but eliminated the Power 5 conference from getting even one team in. The ACC, the Big Ten and the SEC champions are all getting in. What about an undefeated Pac-12 champion or an at-large team?

With it being mostly conference-only across the Power 5, conference cannibalization was inevitable. What wasn’t was the Big 12 losing to a bunch of Sun Belt teams in its plus-one to essentially ruin strong teams like Iowa State and Kansas State’s season before it even really got started. Factor in Texas and Oklahoma’s slow starts and there was no margin for error for OKST.

Oklahoma State’s overtime loss to Texas was a massive ding to the Big 12’s reputation this year.

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