{"id":341259,"date":"2025-10-29T17:48:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T17:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/341259\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T17:48:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T17:48:13","slug":"joel-klatt-picks-texas-tech-over-byu-in-big-12-championship-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/341259\/","title":{"rendered":"Joel Klatt picks Texas Tech over BYU in Big 12 Championship game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There arguably isn\u2019t a better conference championship race in the Power Four than what\u2019s underway in the Big 12. There, in a parity-driven conference, there are four teams with one or fewer conference losses and eight teams with two or fewer conference losses.<\/p>\n<p>College football analyst <strong>Joel Klatt<\/strong> dove into the Big 12 race on The Joel Klatt Show. There, he decided that it\u2019s going to be a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/college\/texas-tech-red-raiders\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Texas Tech<\/strong><\/a> vs. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/college\/byu-cougars\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>BYU<\/strong><\/a> battle in the Big 12 Championship Game with the Red Raiders coming out on top.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the Big 12, this one gets kind of crazy,\u201d Joel Klatt <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LgsUd4eynf4\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of scenarios in the Big 12. I think it\u2019s one of the leagues that could go totally haywire\u2026 But in the Big 12, let\u2019s just say for the sake of argument that Texas Tech were to run the table and beat BYU. So, both Texas Tech and BYU would be 11-1 at that point at the end of the year.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>This season has been phenomenal for Texas Tech, coming off an offseason where the Red Raiders were very active in the Transfer Portal. It\u2019s safe to say they\u2019ve hit, sitting at 7-1 on the season overall and 4-1 in Big 12 play. Then, BYU had an awkward offseason, losing its starting quarterback. It\u2019s worked out with freshman <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/bear-bachmeier-150597\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bear Bachmeier<\/a><\/strong>, though. He\u2019s hit the ground running and now the Cougars are 8-0 and 5-0 in Big 12 play.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd they would each be 7-1 in the conference and, likely, pending some of these other games, like I\u2019m talking about the wonkiness,\u201d Klatt said. \u201cLet\u2019s just say Texas Tech and BYU face each other as 11-1 foes  in Dallas in the Big 12 Championship Game. Now, that would mean Tech would beat BYU in the regular season in their upcoming game. They would be healthier then. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/skyler-gill-howard-107715\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Skyler Gill-Howard<\/a><\/strong> might be back for that Big 12 Championship Game. Possibly. I\u2019m going to go with Tech winning that one. They would be a 12-1 Big 12 Champion, which would leave BYU as an 11-2 team, non-champion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That Big 12 Championship win would put Texas Tech in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/category\/college-football-playoff\/news\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>College Football Playoff<\/strong><\/a>. Depending on the rest of the field, however, BYU would still have an argument to make it too. A season ago, it was just conference champion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/college\/arizona-state-sun-devils\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Arizona State<\/strong><\/a> to make the field as the four-seed. However, now the seeding model has changed to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/news\/report-college-football-playoff-expected-to-adopt-straight-seeding-model-in-2025\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">straight-seeding model<\/a>. That means the top-four ranked conference champions no longer inherently get a top-four seed. <\/p>\n<p>There are also two key teams still in this conference race. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/college\/cincinnati-bearcats\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Cincinnati<\/strong><\/a> is 5-0 in Big 12 play. That\u2019s with an upcoming game against BYU. Then, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/college\/houston-cougars\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Houston<\/strong><\/a> sits at 4-1 in Big 12 play. They\u2019ve already dropped a game to Texas Tech and won\u2019t see BYU, but they could also make it interesting down the stretch here. <\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s still a whole month of football left to play. For some teams, that includes five games or nearly half their season. So, there\u2019s still plenty of time for chaos before the Big 12 Championship Game on Saturday, December 6th. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There arguably isn\u2019t a better conference championship race in the Power Four than what\u2019s underway in the Big&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":341260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,87289,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-341259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-joel-klatt","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115458716757289408","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}