Coach Deion Sanders and the Colorado Buffaloes finished the regular season in a four-way for first place in the Big 12 Conference but have been shut out of the Big 12 championship game next weekend because they lost to Kansas and Kansas State earlier this year.
That’s what it boiled down to for the Buffs, according to Big 12 tiebreaker rules.
Arizona State (10-2) and Iowa State (10-2) instead will play each other for the Big 12 football championship Dec. 7 in Arlington, Texas, after they finished the regular season tied for first place with with Colorado (9-3) and BYU (10-2), each with a 7-2 league record.
Arizona State and Iowa State won the right to play for the championship according to league tiebreaker rules, which stress the importance of records against common Big 12 opponents and their strength of schedule in league play.
Why are ASU, Iowa State playing for the Big 12 title, not CU, BYU?
All of those first-place teams have not played each other this season and none of them defeated all the other tied teams. According to Big 12 rules, the next tiebreaker is their records against common conference opponents.
In this case, the four first-place teams had four common Big 12 opponents: Kansas, Kansas State, Utah and Central Florida. Arizona State was 4-0 against those teams. BYU and Iowa State were both 3-1. Colorado was 2-2, having lost against Kansas and Kansas State.
That gave Arizona State the advantage in this tie. The tie between BYU and Iowa State gets more complicated but ultimately was settled by the strength of each team’s league schedule, based on combined win percentage in conference games. Iowa State edged BYU with a combined opponent’s league record of 36-45 compared to 31-50 for BYU. In the end, it hurt BYU’s case that it played Oklahoma State (0-9) and Arizona (2-7) while Iowa State did not.
It still came down to the last game for Colorado
The same four teams entered the final weekend of the regular season in a tie for first place in the Big 12 with 6-2 league records. All won to leave a four-way tie.
∎ Colorado beat Oklahoma State on Friday at home, 52-0, to finish 9-3 overall under head coach Deion Sanders.
∎ Arizona State beat Arizona on Saturday on the road, 49-7.
∎ Iowa State beat Kansas State on Saturday at home, 29-21.
∎ BYU won a late Saturday night game at home against Houston, 30-18.
Colorado needed two of those other first-place teams to lose to get into the championship, or a BYU loss combined with a Texas Tech win against West Virginia. Tech did beat West Virginia Saturday, 52-15, leaving Colorado’s fate up to the late Saturday night game at BYU on ESPN.
If BYU had lost, CU would have been in a three-way tie for first with Arizona State and Iowa State.
In that case, all three teams have 4-2 records against common Big 12 opponents. The next tiebreaker would be their records against the next highest placed common opponents in the league standings. That would be second-place Texas Tech (6-3). Colorado beat Tech this season but Iowa State and Arizona State both lost the Red Raiders – a deciding factor that would have put CU into the Big 12 title game under that scenario.
When and where is the Big 12 championship game?
It will be at noon ET on Dec. 7 on ABC from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Will the winner get into the College Football Playoff?
Almost certainly. The 12-team playoff gives automatic berths to the five highest-ranked league champions, in addition to seven at-large berths. The Big 12 champ would need to outrank one of at least five other league champs in the final playoff rankings Dec. 8 to get an automatic playoff berth. In the current playoff rankings, teams from four other leagues outrank the Big 12’s highest ranked team, Arizona State at No. 16. The Sun Devils are just one spot higher than the leader from the sixth-highest ranked league leader: Tulane of the American Athletic Conference at No. 17. Iowa State is No. 18.
The good news for the Big 12 is that Tulane lost to Memphis on Thanksgiving, which will drop them below both Arizona State and Iowa State in the rankings. To get an automatic berth, the Big 12 champ needs to outrank the winner of the AAC championship game on Friday: Army (9-1) vs. Tulane (9-3).
Where will Colorado play in a bowl game?
It still looks like the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio on Dec. 28. The Alamo Bowl matches a team from the Big 12 to play a team from the former Pac-12 Conference, according to contracts that predated the demise of the Pac-12. The Alamo Bowl gets first pick among non-playoff teams from both of those pools of eligible teams, with an eye on avoiding regular-season rematches and maximizing television viewership and ticket sales.
If Arizona State goes to the playoff as the Big 12 champ, the Alamo could pick Colorado as a former Pac-12 team to play BYU or Iowa State, even though all of those teams are now in the Big 12. Colorado still hasn’t played BYU since 1988 and hasn’t played Iowa State since 2010.
If Iowa State goes to the playoff, the Alamo Bowl still could pick a 9-3 Colorado team over a 10-3 Arizona State team.
If the Alamo Bowl passed on Colorado, the Holiday Bowl in San Diego has the next pick among former Pac-12 teams and likely would take the Buffs to play a team from the Atlantic Coast Conference in the Dec. 27 game.
What doomed Colorado this season?
The Buffs had a great year, improving from 4-8 in Sanders’ first season and 1-11 in 2022. But if they had just beaten Kansas on Nov. 23, they’d be alone in first place and playing for the Big 12 title. They lost, 37-21, after falling into a 17-0 hole at the start.
The loss to Kansas State still stings, too, since it hurt the Buffs’ tiebreaker chances. The Buffs lost that one at home Oct. 12, 31-28, even after gaining a lead late in the fourth quarter.
Why were so many teams tied for first place in the Big 12?
The league doesn’t play a full round-robin schedule and also is not split into divisions despite its size (16 teams) with the addition this season of Colorado, Arizona State, Arizona and Utah. Each team only plays nine league games in the regular season. Since every Big 12 team does not play each other, multiple teams can easily end up with the same record in league play. It’s also why five Big 12 teams entered the weekend tied for second place with 5-3 league records.
Head-to-head competition otherwise is the first tiebreaker between two tied teams.
Colorado, for example, hadn’t played BYU, Iowa State or Arizona State in the regular season, but could end up playing BYU or Iowa State in the Alamo Bowl Dec. 28.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
