The Big 12 Will Likely (Again) Come down to Turnover Margin

This shouldn’t shock you if you’ve been paying attention, but the Big 12 is about to be a reduced to a simple game of “who can win the turnover battle?” Like, literally one game.

If Baylor and Oklahoma State win this weekend against OU and at Iowa State respectively, next Saturday’s showdown in Stillwater will almost certainly be for the 2015 Big 12 title no matter what happens after that.[1. There’s still a weird scenario in which TCU could actually win the conference on the final weekend.]

In fact, if Oklahoma State and Baylor win this weekend, the conference crown will be all but finalized before Bedlam unless you think Baylor is going to lose to Texas at home (which means, like Robert Whetsell, I think I’m rooting for OU this weekend).

Anyway, I say all this to point out how it’s come to OSU and Baylor again. Remember how we talked earlier in the season about how the teams that have the best turnover margin have almost exclusively won the Big 12 in the last decade?

It’s happening again. Here are the turnover margin rankings through 75 percent of the season this year.

The “we’re taking it back” mantra has been more than a slogan for the Pokes. They keep on taking it back. While these numbers are skewed by Big 12 tempo (we can’t have it both ways), within the conference, they’re absolutely legitimate. And whoever wins the turnover battle in two weeks in Stillwater is probably going to win another conference championship.