Week 12 Bowl Projections: Everything on the Table with Two Weeks Left

As the season goes on, the bowl picture should become clearer. And yet for Oklahoma State, it seems to have gotten murkier. The Pokes’ Big 12 title hopes are teetering on a TCU loss in Lubbock this weekend, but regardless, it seems as if OSU is potentially set up for a solid bowl as long as it finishes 10-2.

Let’s take a look.

As you can see, this week’s projections are all over the map. From Camping World against NC State (?) to Cotton against Penn State (where Saquon Barkley would be the second-best RB), there appears to be a wide variance in where the Cowboys will go.

A lot of people have asked about the Big 12 tie-in to a NY6 bowl should OU go to the College Football Playoff. Because the Sugar Bowl is part of the CFP this year, the Big 12 is not guaranteed a slot in another bowl like it was in 2015 (when OSU went to the Sugar as the B12 runner up). So any NY6 bowl that is filled by a Big 12 team not in the CFP will be a committee at-large pick.

The only tie-in this year is the Orange Bowl which will select an ACC team vs. SEC/B10/Notre Dame (which seems like a lot of teams to choose from). Obviously the five conference champs get in, and so does the highest-ranked Group of 5 team. Everything else will be filled by the selection committee and largely based on the final rankings.

With Oklahoma State ranked No. 13 and lots of 2-loss teams ahead of them potentially grabbing a third before the season is over, it’s pretty easy to see a No. 8 OSU playing a No. 7 Penn State in the Cotton Bowl (especially if TCU loses again … or maybe even if it doesn’t).

Here are those two-loss teams and their remaining schedules.

No. 13 Oklahoma State: Kansas State and Kansas at home
No. 12 TCU: at Texas Tech, Baylor at home
No. 11 USC: UCLA, Pac-12 title
No. 10 Penn State: Nebraska, at Maryland
No. 9 Ohio State: Illinois, at Michigan
No. 8 Notre Dame: Navy, at Stanford
No. 6 Auburn: Louisiana-Monroe, Alabama

Here’s how Stewart Mandel of The Athletic had the NY6s, for example.

It would be helpful to Oklahoma State’s NY6 chances for multiples of those teams to fall over the next two or three weeks. Either way, it’s going to be close. And the difference between ending this year in the Alamo against Mike Leach vs. the Fiesta against USC or the Cotton against Penn State could not be more stark.