What Oklahoma State’s Path to Big 12 Title Game Looks like After Loss to Iowa State

Maybe it was the spookiest day of the year, Iowa State’s breakthrough or just, well — Ames. Either way, the Cowboys’ 51-49 loss to Iowa State takes control of the Big 12 race out of Oklahoma State’s hands.

The Cowboys now find themselves in a four-way tie for fourth place in the conference with a 3-2 record in Big 12 games.

That makes OSU’s chances of playing for a Big 12 title sound bleak, but it actually wouldn’t take much for the Cowboys to once again move into the driver’s seat for second place.

Current standings

While not impossible, it would be a bit surprising to see a 6-3 team make the trip to Arlington, so the Cowboys almost certainly need to win out from here. Doing so would pull Texas Tech down into the mud with the other two loss teams.

The Tech game feels like the only real challenge left on the schedule as the Cowboys travel to a four-loss Kansas State team next week, then host the Red Raiders, then travel to a four-loss Arizona State team (which is improving but only after looking rather lifeless for most of the first six weeks) and finally wrap up with a five-loss Kansas team so bad it masked how poorly the Sun Devils were playing.

It seems somewhat safe, this is still the Big 12, to simplify things and assume Baylor isn’t going to run the table with an interim head coach against a schedule that includes BYU, Texas Tech and Houston. The Bears can, and probably will, play spoiler, but we don’t have to factor them into the championship race itself.

That leaves six teams.

Utah staying unbeaten would be best for Oklahoma State, as that will require knocking BYU down into what is shaping up to be a cluster of a tiebreaker and would mean Arizona takes a third loss, seemingly dropping them out of the race.

That leaves Oklahoma State, BYU, Houston and Texas Tech all tied with two losses. A three- or four-way tie for second in the conference feels almost inevitable so we’ll circle back to tiebreakers in a second.

However, if the Cougars do win the Holy War next week, Utah’s road game to Arizona the following Saturday would be an obvious chance for another letdown, potentially pulling the entire conference down with multiple losses.

That opens things up quite a bit, but counting on a Utah team which demolished Cincinnati by 24 points Saturday on the road and hasn’t lost once yet, feels like asking too much.

Tiebreakers

Two-teamers are simple so let’s knock those out of the way. Remember, we assume the Cowboys win out or there’s not much point in this article.

Oklahoma State wins the head-to-head against Texas Tech.

Oklahoma State’s superior record against similar conference opponents gives it the edge over BYU (lost to UCF) and Arizona (lost to Texas Tech).

Houston is a problem.

OSU loses the tiebreaker there due to head-to-head.

But it’s possible that all gets muddied up by a mutli-team tiebreaking extravaganza.

If Oklahoma State-Houston-Texas Tech tie:

It will come down to whichever team faced the hardest conference schedule by total conference wins. Houston will likely have the edge here given Utah will add a significant number of wins, but there’s still enough football left that the math could probably swing in any direction.

If other Big 12 teams end up in the two-loss mix it’s the same scenario just more teams to look at. Tech and Houston are relevant because they are the only other contenders to play both each other and OSU so they have a certain number of wins padded into their schedule.

Rooting guide for next week:

TCU at Arizona: TCU (signifigant)
Cincinnati at Houston: Cincy (critical)
BYU at Utah: (major)
UCF at Kansas: Kansas (slight tiebreaker advantage)
Colorado at Arizona State: Arizona State (slight tiebreaker advantage)
West Virgnia at Texas Tech: N/A, as crazy as it seems if everyone loses except Houston that’s bad so for now this result doesn’t matter to OSU