How Having (and Not Having) Big 12 Divisions Screwed Oklahoma State (Twice)

The Big 12 is not implementing divisions which is pretty crazy. What would have happened to Oklahoma State in the five-year history of the Big 12 having 10 teams if divisions had existed all along? ESPN’s Max Olson took a look.

Olson looked at each of the five Big 12 title scenarios from the five seasons since the Big 12 went to 10 teams. There is a bonkers scenario in 2013 in which OSU would have been kept from the Big 12 title game because of point differential on the final play of the season.

On the final play of the game, Oklahoma State ran a desperation lateral play and goofed up. The backwards throw to QB Clint Chelf was errant and Eric Striker scooped the ball up and scored for a 33-24 victory. In this tiebreaker scenario, that play gives OU the spot in the Big 12 title game.

So let’s put it this way: If Oklahoma State, down 27-24 against its hated rival, had instead sent Chelf out to take a knee and take the Bedlam loss, the Cowboys make the Big 12 title game.

This is the world we now live in! That’s not all, though. The only year a conference championship game would have helped the Big 12? 2011.

It might be hard to picture the BCS rankings moving the Cowboys into the national title game had they defeated K-State again. But Oklahoma State was only .0086 behind Alabama for the No. 2 spot. What if another win over a top-10 foe would have pushed the Cowboys ahead? This might have been one year where a Big 12 title game really could’ve helped.

Sweet. Just more ways to twist that 2011 knife a little deeper! Conference championship games are pretty much never going to help the Big 12 make the CFB Playoff. Except it would have if the playoff was only two teams in 2011.

So new ways are being invented for OSU to have retroactively been kept from playing for the 2011 title. The playoff is now four teams (OSU would have been in), and the Big 12 has a conference title game (OSU probably would have been in).

I need a drink.