OU Beats Baylor, and Oklahoma State’s Backdoor to the Big 12 Title is Closing

Baylor Baylored on Saturday after leading OU 28-3 early in the first half. OU ran 58 plays for 368 yards and 24 points in the second half, while Baylor checked in with 16 (!!) plays for 69 yards and no points.

As one commenter in our Chamber thread put it …

It’s like OU was terminally ill in the first half, then during halftime was miraculously cured, then married the supermodel they met while in the hospital, and won the lottery. Unbelievable.

I laughed. But it’s true.

Here are your Big 12 standings with two games to go for everyone (schedules in parentheses).

Baylor: 6-1 (Texas at home, at Kansas)
OU: 6-1 (TCU at home, at OSU)
OSU: 4-3 (at WVU, OU at home)
Texas: 4-3 (at Baylor, Tech at home)
Iowa State: 4-3 (Kansas at home, at Kansas State)

It looks as if OU and Baylor will meet in Arlington for a rematch in the Big 12 title game, but there’s still a not-well-lit-and-possibly-completely-obfuscated path for OSU to crawl through five back doors and enter that game against Baylor.

Here’s how.

Win out, Iowa State wins out, OU loses out (TCU at home, at OSU). This path was a LOT clearer had Baylor defeated OU on Saturday because then you wouldn’t be relying on TCU defeating OU in Norman next Saturday.

Essentially, OSU wants to be in a multi-way tie for second that includes Iowa State or doesn’t include Texas. Let’s say it’s OSU-OU-Texas-Iowa State all at 6-3 if OU drops their last two, and Texas, OSU and Iowa State win their final two. Here’s the tiebreaker on that.

If three or more teams are tied, steps 1 through 4 will be followed until a determination is made.  If only two teams remain tied after any step, the winner of the regular-season game between the two tied teams shall prevail.

Step 1. The conference records of the three or more teams will be compared against each other in a “mini round-robin” format.

In this scenario, the round-robin records for those four teams would be …

OSU: 2-1
OU: 2-1
ISU: 1-2
Texas: 1-2

OSU moves on to the Big 12 title because it would have beaten OU. Let’s say Texas loses to Baylor and OSU-OU-Iowa State are tied for second with each other. Back to the round-robin.

OSU: 2-0
OU: 1-1
Iowa State: 0-2

OSU moves on.

Where it gets dicey is if OSU and Texas win out and TCU beats OU but Iowa State loses to Kansas State in the final week of the year. OSU, OU and Texas would all be 6-3 and all be 1-1 against each other. So you move to step 2.

Step. 2 The conference records of the three or more teams will be compared against the remaining team(s) in the conference standings from top to bottom.

a. When comparing against the remaining teams in the conference standings any two-way ties will be broken by head-to-head competition before the comparison begins.

b. If more than a two-way tie exists amongst the remaining teams in the conference standings, the record against the collective tied teams as a group will be used.

Since the two teams just beyond the top four in the standings would almost certainly be Iowa State and Kansas State, and OSU went 2-0 against them but Texas and OU did not, OSU would still be in good shape here, even if ISU and KSU were tied for fifth. But then you start relying on a litany of other things to break instead of just two or three.

The cleanest path for the Pokes is winning out, TCU beating OU and Iowa State winning out (or Baylor beating Texas next week).

The other intriguing thing would be Baylor dropping games to Texas and Kansas, and the standings ending like this (if OU beats TCU and loses to OSU).

OU: 7-2
OSU: 6-3
Baylor: 6-3
Texas: 6-3
Iowa State: 6-3

The round-robin records there would look like this.

Texas: 2-1
Baylor: 2-1
Iowa State: 1-2
OSU: 1-2

And Texas (!) would move on to meet OU in the Big 12 title game. I’m rooting for mega-chaos of OU and Baylor losing out and the following …

OU: 6-3
OSU: 6-3
Baylor: 6-3
Texas: 6-3
Iowa State: 6-3

Stick that in my veins. Let’s go through that round-robin scenario.

OU: 3-1
Baylor: 2-2
OSU: 2-2
Texas: 2-2
Iowa State: 1-3

I think OU would move on, they’d start over and then Texas would move on. I think. Or Bob Bowlsby runs a random number generator on Periscope and we go from there. Who knows.

So what’s the most likely scenario? Well, obviously Baylor-OU in the championship. But let’s pretend like CD doesn’t return and OU drops their last two. I think the following teams will be favored in the final two weeks.

OSU > WVU
Baylor > Texas
OU > TCU
Iowa State > Kansas

So the standings going into the final week — if all the favorites except for OU win — would look like this.

Baylor: 7-1
OU: 6-2
OSU: 5-3
Iowa State: 5-3
Texas: 4-4

Then in the last week, the following teams would be favorites.

Baylor > Kansas
Iowa State > KSU (?)
Texas > Tech
OU > OSU

That would mean the final records would be …

Baylor: 8-1
OU: 7-2
Iowa State: 6-3
Texas: 5-4
OSU: 5-4

However, as noted above, a Bedlam upset in which OSU slayed the Sooners in Stillwater would put OSU, OU and Iowa State all at 6-3, and OSU would — I can’t believe I’m saying this — move on to face Baylor in the Big 12 title game.

There are a lot of games to be played between now and then, but that’s about as deep as I can go on this with two games left for Oklahoma State and the back door barely allowing any light to give these Pokes at least one more week of hope.