The Big 12 is an interesting conference this season. There’s a sneaky amount of depth across the conference. That’s been discussed at length about the top of the conference with the way teams like Texas Tech, BYU, Arizona State, Houston, Utah, and Cincinnati have battled for positioning at the top of the conference.
But there are plenty of teams across the conference that have made this league very interesting to watch all throughout the season.
Right now, there are nine teams that are eligible to compete in the postseason thanks to their win-loss record. Technically speaking, we could get up to 13 teams from the Big 12 eligible to compete in the postseason, but it’d require a few interesting wins this week to make that happen.
- 5-6 Kansas would need to beat 9-2 Utah
- 5-6 Baylor would need to beat 8-3 Houston
- 5-6 UCF would need to beat 10-1 BYU
- 5-6 Kansas State would need to beat 3-8 Colorado (this will almost certainly happen and I’d be shocked if it didn’t)
11 teams from the Big 12 projected to make either a bowl game or the College Football Playoff as we enter Week 14
With Texas Tech leading the way right now, the Red Raiders aren’t included in bowl projections. That said, they are included in postseason projections. Here’s where the Big 12 lands in terms of bowl games, according to the latest projections from ESPN’s Mark Schlabach and Kyle Bonagura:
- BYU Cougars - Valero Alamo bowl vs. USC Trojans (both)
- Arizona State Sun Devils - LA Bowl vs. San Diego State (Bonagura) or Holiday Bowl vs. Georgia Tech (Schlabach)
- Arizona Wildcats - Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl vs. Wake Forest (Bonagura) or Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl vs. Clemson (Schlabach)
- Houston Cougars - Pop-Tarts Bowl vs. Miami (Bonagura) or Kinder’s Texas Bowl vs. Kentucky (Schlabach)
- Cincinnati Bearcats - Rate Bowl vs. Northwestern (Bonagura) or Pop-Tarts Bowl vs. Virginia (Schlabach)
- Iowa State Cyclones - Kinder’s Texas Bowl vs. Texas (Bonagura) or AutoZone Liberty Bowl vs. Memphis (Schlabach)
- TCU Horned Frogs - AutoZone Liberty Bowl vs. Tulane Green Wave (Bonagura) or Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl vs. Army (Schlabach)
- Kansas State Wildcats - Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl vs. Navy (Bonagura) or Rate Bowl vs. Minnesota (Schlabach)
- Baylor Bears - Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl vs. Western Kentucky (Schlabach)
- Utah Utes - SRS Distribution Bowl vs. Iowa (Bonagura) or SRS Distribution Bowl vs. Nebraska (Schlabach)
The teams that got left out?
Well, the Kansas Jayhawks, the UCF Knights, the West Virginia Mountaineers, the Colorado Buffaloes, and the Oklahoma State Cowboys. The Baylor Bears do get left out of Bonagura’s projections, but not in both sets of projections.