It is finally official. One team successfully punched its ticket to the Big 12 championship game over the weekend. And while one team has risen well above the rest, the other nine teams continue to play highly competitive football. With two weeks left, all Big 12 teams still have a decent chance to become bowl eligible before the end of the year. These Big 12 week 11 takeaways highlight just how closely matched most of these teams truly are (with one notable exception).
Big 12 Week 11 Takeaways
TCU Earned More Respect
Two weeks ago, college football play chairman Boo Corrigan stated that TCU’s lack of game control kept them out of the first top four college football playoff rankings. One week after surviving a visit from Texas Tech, and some losses at the top of the playoff rankings, TCU slid into fourth in a very defacto way. It would have been hard to justify keeping one of four remaining undefeated power five teams out of the top four with nine games of data under their belt. TCU traveled down to Austin as a seven-point underdog, with much of the college football world thinking this would be when the “luck” runs out (yours truly included). Instead, TCU emphatically checked the game control box in a 17-10 victory over the Texas Longhorns. The mark of truly great teams is the ones who find ways to win games in different fashions.
To date, TCU had just been the team with a high-flying offense, led by Max Duggan, Kendre Miller, and Quentin Johnston. It also required comeback efforts in the second halves of most of their games. But on a night when the Horned Frog offense was held to its season low in yards (289), the defense stepped up and played its best game of the year. TCU’s defense suffocated the Longhorn offense all night as Texas did not have a single offensive touchdown in the game. They only had 199 yards of offense, including locking up all-world running back Bijan Robinson to 29 yards on 12 carries. TCU’s playoff path is simple in structure; beat Baylor, and Iowa State, and win the Big 12 championship and they are in the playoff. But with the target growing larger on TCU’s back, will they slip up in the next three weeks?
Purple Rain Coming To Arlington?
The last team that likely remains between TCU and the playoff is Kansas State. The Wildcats have had quite a roller coaster of a season. They have suffered some head-scratching losses to Tulane and Texas. Their loss to TCU earlier in the season was a game in which Chris Klieman’s squad had to play all three of their quarterbacks. And at the same time, Kansas State has some of the most dominating victories in the Big 12. They have a 32-point victory over SEC member Mizzou, a 48-point victory over Oklahoma State, and now a 28-point road victory over Baylor.
Dave Arranda’s Baylor team was rolling as powerfully as any Big 12 team over the last three weeks. And yet, Kansas State came into Waco and put an end to any chance of the Bears repeating as Big 12 champs. Kansas State has lowly, but dangerous, West Virginia and Kansas remaining on their schedule. Their path to seal up the other spot in the Big 12 championship is the easiest with two weeks remaining. Especially considering that they have a head-t0-head victory over the two teams directly behind them. But the Big 12 week 11 takeaways are about to show us, truly any Big 12 team can defeat any team in this conference.
Big 12 Is As Evenly Matched As We Thought
Entering the 2022 season, many were projecting it to be a wide-open conference. In fact, a certain Big 12 correspondent boldly predicted that nine teams would go bowling. Currently, six of the ten Big 12 teams are bowl eligible. Thanks to the wild results from this past week of Big 12 action, the door remains open for the remaining four to punch a ticket to bowl season. It started with a slop fest of a game in Morgantown where Oklahoma dropped its fifth game of the season on a last-second field goal. The 23-20 victory likely only brings temporary hot-seat relief to Neal Brown, but still a gutsy win for the Mountaineers.
In the afternoon window, Oklahoma State appeared to be a broken team. They spent much of the game plodding along against a stingy Iowa State defense. But thanks to five forced turnovers by Derek Mason’s defense, the Cowboys did just enough to win 20-14. While many eyes were focused in Austin during the primetime window, in Lubbock, Texas Tech led wire-to-wire in a 43-28 victory over the Kansas Jayhawks. If the results break just right, the bottom half of the Big 12 teams will all finish 6-6. But there is no question that any game remaining in the last two weeks of Big 12 play will yield high-drama, entertaining, close-fought football games.
