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Big 12 Notes – Kansas Week
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November 20th
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ESPN: SP+ Big 12 title odds: BYU (38.6%), Colorado (38.0%), Arizona State (11.7%)
From ESPN … This has turned into just about the best possible season for a 12-team College Football Playoff to make its debut.
There’s been no talk of anyone sitting players in the coming weeks, one of the doom scenarios expansion skeptics brought up. The five to seven best teams in the country are far closer to each other than usual in terms of quality, meaning your draw once you reach the playoff is going to mean an absolute ton. The Group of 5 has produced a team good enough to nearly beat the No. 1 team in the country and, according to the current CFP rankings, maybe even steal a first-round bye. And there’s a solid chance that a very good two-loss SEC team gets left out, meaning that any fears of lowering the bar too far or allowing mediocre teams into the field are quickly being allayed.
Granted, we’re still dealing with a maddening CFP committee that makes maddeningly inconsistent decisions from week to week. And granted, leaving out a very good SEC team likely will result in SEC commissioner Greg Sankey going scorched earth and demanding playoff expansion and many auto-bids for his conference, which might not be great. Then again, he was almost certainly going to do that this offseason anyway, so what does it matter?
We’ve got two Saturdays left to determine who will reach the nine conference championship games — somehow, a few title races are getting blurrier, not clearer at the moment — and then a third Saturday to figure out the CFP’s 12-team field. Let’s walk through all the conference title odds, what’s at stake in the coming week and, for the chaos seekers among us, where things are most likely to go off the rails for the top teams.
Big 12 forecast
SP+ title odds: BYU (38.6%), Colorado (38.0%), Arizona State (11.7%), Iowa State (10.0%), Kansas State (1.1%)
Three weeks ago, the Big 12 title race looked pretty clear: There was a greater than 90% chance that the title would go to either unbeaten BYU (33.8%), unbeaten Iowa State (27.4%) or one-loss Kansas State (30.1%). Colorado (5.2%) lurked as a long shot. Arizona State (0.4%) was an extreme long shot.
Things look awfully different now. In Week 10, Texas Tech upset Iowa State and Houston upset Kansas State. In Week 11, BYU needed last-second heroics to beat Utah, while Kansas made it back-to-back losses for Iowa State. In Week 12, BYU finally succumbed after a couple of great escapes, losing to Kansas, while Kansas State lost again, this time to Arizona State at home.
Over these three weeks, BYU, Iowa State and Kansas State have gone a combined 2-5 and watched their title odds diminish to a combined 50%. Colorado and Arizona State have gone 5-0 and increased theirs to 50%. Just last week, CU’s odds rose by 17.5 percentage points, while ASU’s rose by 9.6, BYU’s fell by 11.2 and K-State’s fell by 15.5. We think we know the stakes here — at a matching 6-1, BYU and Colorado are your new favorites, with 5-2 Arizona State and Iowa State one game back — but BYU and ASU face off Saturday, and who’s to say we don’t get another round of upsets as well?
Semi-realistic chaos scenario to root for Saturday: Take your pick. BYU and Arizona State are playing a tossup game in Tempe (BYU’s win probability, per SP+: 56%), while Kansas, the current lord of chaos, hosts Colorado (CU’s win probability: 54%). Even Iowa State isn’t out of the woods: The Cyclones have only a 60% win probability against all-defense Utah in Salt Lake City. We’ve got four primary title favorites, one is guaranteed to lose, and there’s an 18% chance that three of them do!
… Continue reading story here …
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Parity fine for the SEC, but is hurting the Big 12
From the Daily Camera … At Big 12 football media day in Las Vegas in July, commissioner Brett Yormark said he felt the conference was the deepest in the country.
Heading into the stretch run of the season, the Big 12 may not have the top-end teams, but it’s certainly showing to be deep.
“It’s playing out every weekend,” Yormark told BuffZone on Saturday when he visited Folsom Field and watched Colorado knock off Utah, 49-24.
Very little has gone as expected in the Big 12, in relation to the preseason projections.
Three of the projected top teams — Arizona, Utah and Oklahoma State — are at the bottom of the standings with a combined 3-18 conference record. Three of the projected bottom teams – 14th-ranked BYU, 16th-ranked CU and 21st-ranked Arizona State – are at the top of the standings with a combined 17-4 conference mark.
Yet, the depth and parity Yormark promised is very much alive in the Big 12.
“We talked about the month of November being pretty magical, because of so many different scenarios,” Yormark said. “When you think about how many schools are in contention for the championship right now and who’s going to end up in Arlington on that first weekend in December, it’s playing out just as we had hoped. Now, it’s playing out with different schools, if you will, being at the top, but still playing out with respect to depth and parity. Every game matters.”
Where the parity could hurt the Big 12 is in the College Football Playoff standings. The CFP expanded from four teams to 12 this year, which provides a better opportunity for the Big 12 to get multiple teams into the mix.
As entertaining as the parity and competitiveness has been, weekly upsets might hurt the Big 12.
… Continue reading story here …
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November 18th
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Big 12 Betting Lines: CU opens as a 2.5-point road favorite over Kansas
From Draftkings.com …
Big 12 lines
Saturday, November 23rd
- Arizona at TCU … 1:00 p.m., MT, ESPN+ … TCU is an 11.5-point home favorite …
- No. 16 Colorado at Kansas … 1:30 p.m., FOX … Kansas is a 2.5-point home underdog …
- No. 14 BYU at No. 21 Arizona State … 1:30 p.m., MT, ESPN … Arizona State is a 3.5-point home favorite …
- Texas Tech at Oklahoma State … 1:30 p.m., MT, ESPN+ … Oklahoma State is a 3.5-point home underdog …
- UCF at West Virginia … 1:30 p.m., MT, ESPNU … West Virginia is a 3.0-point home underdog …
- Baylor at Houston … 5:00 p.m., MT, FS1 … Houston is an 8.0-point home underdog …
- No. 22 Iowa State at Utah … 5:30 p.m., MT, Fox … Utah is a 6.5-point home underdog …
- Cincinnati at Kansas State … 6:00 p.m., MT, ESPN2 … Kansas State is an 8.5-point home favorite …
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ESPN: What went wrong at BYU, Kansas State, and Iowa State
From ESPN … San José State led No. 13 Boise State by 14 and had the ball at the BSU 2 just 20 minutes in. Wisconsin led top-ranked Oregon heading into the fourth quarter. Arkansas had the ball and a chance to take the lead on No. 3 Texas with 13 minutes left. Boston College had the ball and a chance to take the lead on No. 14 SMU with two minutes left. Pitt did take the lead on No. 20 Clemson with 1:36 left.
I predicted jump scares in my Week 12 preview, and we got loads of them. Boise State, Oregon, Texas, SMU and Clemson all survived with varying degrees of dramatics, but others weren’t so lucky.
No. 6 BYU and No. 16 Kansas State were the latest to fall victim — again, in K-State’s case — to the chaos demons in the Big 12. LSU not only lost in Gainesville to an inspired Florida team, getting all but eliminated from CFP contention in the process, but the Tigers were also so drastically outplayed that they were lucky to lose by only 11. New Mexico scored its first win over a ranked opponent since 2003, ending whatever CFP hopes Washington State had. Hell, down in Conference USA, the conference title favorite (Western Kentucky) lost, and two other leaders (Jacksonville State and Sam Houston) nearly did as well.
If you bet on every underdog to cover Saturday, you’d have won 62% of your bets. It was as delightfully strange a day as I had hoped, even if we didn’t see quite as much carnage as we could have.
We’ll have plenty of chances to talk about the teams still heavily involved in the CFP race soon enough. Let’s pause for a moment, though, and recap Week 12’s action by looking at the teams that have either been eliminated from CFP contention or have seen their odds diminish significantly. What went wrong for hopefuls like LSU and Kansas State? What’s going wrong for Miami and BYU?
(Note: All playoff odds below are from the Allstate Playoff Predictor.)
Kansas State
Playoff odds three weeks ago: 39.0%
What went wrong? Turnovers. In seven wins this season, Kansas State’s offense has been mostly fantastic, combining a 45.8% success rate (which would rank 30th for the whole season) with an average of 14.3 yards per successful play (which would rank third).
While the Wildcats have scored at least 41 points in three wins, they’ve scored 42 total points in three losses. Their success rate is almost the same in losses (42.9%), but opponents that have been able to slow the big-play train have benefited from eventual mistakes from quarterback Avery Johnson. He has thrown six of his nine interceptions in the losses, and K-State has committed eight turnovers in those games. We can consider this the natural downside of starting a precocious, young, high-upside QB. His best moments have been brilliant. But he hasn’t been consistent enough for the Wildcats to warrant a CFP spot. (Flubbing a couple of field goal snaps against Arizona State didn’t help, either.)
Iowa State
Current playoff odds: 10.4%
Playoff odds four weeks ago: 48.1%
What has gone wrong? The run defense took a couple of weeks off. After a 34-17 win over Cincinnati on Saturday, Iowa State is 8-2 overall and 5-2 in conference play. The Cyclones are still a game behind BYU and Colorado, but the past three weeks in the conference have been deliriously messy. That could remain the case.
Just three weeks ago, however, the Cyclones controlled their own destiny. And they learned just how fickle destiny can be in the Big 12. ISU still ranks 18th nationally in points allowed per drive (1.5), but against Texas Tech and Kansas it allowed opponents to run efficiently — Tech’s Tahj Brooks had 122 yards and a touchdown, KU’s Devin Neal had 116 and two — and stay in third-and-manageable. It was eventually costly in losses of 23-22 and 45-36. ISU defended Cincinnati well Saturday, but the brief struggles hurt.
BYU
Current playoff odds: 39.1%
Playoff odds last week: 58.6%
What’s going wrong? The red zone offense has cratered. BYU’s defense was the superior unit for most of the 9-0 start, but Jake Retzlaff and the offense found a nice cruising altitude, scoring at least 34 points in six straight games. That slipped to 22 in a narrow win over Utah last week, then 13 in Saturday night’s four-point loss to Kansas.
Against both the Utes and Jayhawks, BYU had the superior yards-per-play average, but in three red zone trips against Utah, the Cougars managed only one touchdown with two field goals. Against Kansas, it was even worse: four red zone trips, two field goals, an interception and a turnover on downs. They did score a second-quarter touchdown on a 30-yard pass from Retzlaff to Hinckley Ropati, but the closer the Cougars get to the end zone, the worse they execute.
The good news is, this doesn’t have to be a long-term deficiency. Michigan struggled in the red zone for decent-sized chunks of time in both 2022 and 2023 and still won the Big Ten both years (and the national title last year). But if the Cougars don’t beat a smoking-hot Arizona State in Tempe this coming week, their CFP chances will plummet. They probably won’t win that game without turning red zone trips into TDs.
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