SALT LAKE CITY — With two teams ranked inside the top 10, the Big 12 can expect BYU and Texas Tech to hold similar positions in the season’s inaugural College Football Playoff rankings.
At 8-0, the Cougars have steadily climbed the rankings and are now at No. 8. The Red Raiders, who topped out at No. 7 last month before losing to defending champion Arizona State, are one spot behind BYU.
After Arizona State was the only Big 12 representative in the first 12-team playoff last season, the conference strongly desires two teams in this season. BYU and Texas Tech, who play each other Saturday in Lubbock, appear on track to land either the automatic or an at-large berth, but plenty of work remains ahead for both teams.
At the rate they’re going, the Utah Utes also deserve serious consideration for playoff inclusion. At 7-2, with conference losses coming to Texas Tech and BYU, Utah has an excellent chance to close the season having won seven of its last eight games.
But remember, respect is hard to come by for the Big 12. Nothing is certain beyond the champion making the playoff.
With the committee’s initial rankings coming out Tuesday night, multiple outlets have explored the possibilities. As expected, opinions are heavily slanted toward the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference.
ESPN posted a playoff story breaking down the Power Four teams into four tiers, with the Group of Five conferences accounting for the fifth tier. The different tiers could turn into tears for the Big 12.
The first tier understandably includes unbeaten Indiana, Ohio State and Texas A&M. All three are virtual locks to make the playoff field, even with a stumble along the way.
But the problem is, there are four unbeaten teams from power conferences. ESPN has BYU on the second level, joining five teams with one loss, including Texas Tech.
Despite winning all seven games by a margin of 36.7 points, which ranks first among Power Four conferences, the Utes were in the fourth tier. At 6-2, starting 0-2 with losses to two ranked teams — Miami and Texas A&M — Notre Dame is on the third tier with three one-loss teams and 6-2 Texas.
The Irish have a 10-point win over second-year Big Ten member USC, which at 6-2 is also on the third tier. Utah also has played three teams currently ranked, destroying then-No. 17 Cincinnati by 31 points in addition to the Texas Tech and BYU losses.
Yahoo Sports listed a projected field of the 12 playoff teams, ranking Texas Tech at 10 and BYU at eight, respectively. Utah was not mentioned.
The other three unbeatens were the top ranked teams, starting with No. 1 Ohio State followed by fellow Big Ten mate Indiana and then the SEC’s Texas A&M. At 7-1, No. 4 Alabama was the highest ranked one-loss team.
The Crimson Tide began the season by losing to Florida State, which had lost four consecutive games before beating Wake Forest last Saturday. The Seminoles are 1-4 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, including a loss to a 3-6 Stanford team that BYU beat by 24 points in September.
Alabama deserves to take a hit for a 14-point loss to a mediocre team but not according to Yahoo Sports, which wrote “The Crimson Tide’s Week 1 loss to Florida State has to be discounted at this point.” Scoreboard apparently only counts in one direction.
Using the same logic, let’s discount Texas Tech’s 4-point loss to Arizona State in Tempe. Besides playing without injured starting quarterback Behren Morton, the Red Raiders lost to a virtually unbeaten combination.
With quarterback Sam Leavitt and star receiver Jordyn Tyson in the lineup together, the Sun Devils are 15-2 over the last two seasons. Missing one of the two, they are 2-4 over the same period.
And why not discount Utah’s loss to Texas Tech in the first Big 12 game for both teams? After all, the Utes were breaking in a new quarterback and offensive coordinator, who needed time to mesh with the new running backs and receivers.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.