Despite OU Loss, the Big 12 Still Held Its Own in Postseason Play

With Oklahoma’s double-overtime loss to Georgia in Monday night’s Rose Bowl, the Big 12 has concluded its bowl season. But just because the Sooners won’t be representing the Great Plains in the National Championship game, that doesn’t mean the Big 12 didn’t represent itself pretty well this postseason.

Let’s see how the Big 12 stacked up against its other Power 5 counterparts.

Big Ten: 7-1

The Big Ten, which was left out of the playoff this season, almost had a perfect bowl record to boast as a consolation prize. Only Michigan fell 26-19 to South Carolina in the Outback Bowl.

Big 12: 5-3

The Big 12 will end with the second-best bowl record among the big boys with Kansas State, Iowa State, Texas, Oklahoma State and TCU carrying the flag.

Oklahoma looked like the league’s best chance at a national championship for the foreseeable future — at least in the first half on Monday night — but the Sooners gave up a 17-point lead and fell in the second overtime 54-48 to Georgia. As a result, the Big 12 remains the only league that has never sent a team to the national championship.

Also: Through four seasons, the Big 12 is still the only Power 5 league without a playoff win.

— David Ubben (@davidubben) January 2, 2018

SEC: 5-6 (will be)

The conference where “it just means more” will finish 5-6 when it’s all said and done. Of course, one mark in either column will be the result of the national title game. In a year in which the SEC was supposedly (and actually) down, another championship trophy should be enough to satisfy most detractors.

ACC: 4-6

With Duke, Wake Forest and N.C. State earning legitimate wins and Florida State blowing out Southern Miss in a year when it may have not technically qualified for a bowl game and in a game that barely qualifies as a bowl game, there’s not a ton of East Coast pride for the league to hang its hat on.

The best two teams in the conference this year couldn’t get it done. Clemson got rolled by the Crimson Tide and Miami fell to Wisconsin in the Orange Bowl.

Pac-12: 1-8

In embarrassing fashion, the West Coast teams not only finished last among Power 5 conferences, they finished better than only the SWAC (that’s the Southwestern Athletic Conference) which went 0-1.

With 75 percent of its league participating in postseason play, you’d think the USCs and Stanfords or even Washingtons of the world could get you something. Nope. The Pac-12’s only flag bearer was Utah with a win over West Virginia in the Heart of Dallas Bowl. This was the worst single postseason showing of any Power 5 conference, ever.

So how do bowl records equate to a conference’s standing among the group?

That’s subjective. Is the Big 12 the second-best conference in America? No, probably not. Different people place different amounts of weight on the outcome of bowl games. But winning matters, and winning the games on your schedule matters. It has to.