On Saturday, no. 12 BYU dominated TCU 44-13. The Cougars controlled the game from start to finish, setting up a potential play-in game for the Big 12 championship game next week at Cincinnati. In this article, we will outline BYU’s path to the Big 12 title game with two games left to play.
BYU has maintained control of its destiny to the Big 12 title game all season. That hasn’t changed. If BYU goes 2-0 over the last two games, it will be playing in the Big 12 championship in Arlington no matter what else happens around the league.
In that scenario, BYU would be 8-1. The only other one-loss team would be Texas Tech (cause let’s be real, there is a 0% chance Tech is going to lose again in the regular season).
BYU would rematch Tech in the Big 12 championship game.
1-1 might get BYU into the Big 12 title game, but the Cougars would need some help. For the purposes of this article, we will assume that if BYU goes 1-1, they would lose to Cincinnati and beat UCF. FPI gives BYU a 92% chance to beat UCF, so for the scenarios we are about to look at, we will assume that BYU will take care of business against UCF.
If BYU loses to Cincinnati, the Cougars would need Arizona State and Cincinnati to lose one more game to make it to the championship game. In other words, BYU’s title hopes would come down to three games:
BYU would need TCU to beat Cincinnati, and BYU would need Arizona State to lose to either Arizona or Colorado. If both Arizona State and Cincinnati lose one more game, that would leave BYU and Utah tied for second place. BYU’s head-to-head win over Utah would send them to the Cougars to the championship game in that scenario.
If BYU loses to Cincinnati and the Bearcats win out, it would be Utah that would play against Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game (Utah would win the three-way tiebreaker between BYU, Utah, and Cincinnati and Utah would win a four-way tiebreaker between BYU, Utah, Arizona State, and Cincinnati).
The chances that those two dominoes go in BYU’s favor is a little better than you might expect. ASU has a 31.6% chance to win out and Cincinnati has a 41.4% chance to beat TCU. Therefore, there is a 40.1% chance that both of those things would go in BYU’s favor.
It goes without saying that BYU would not play for the Big 12 championship game if they finish the season on a two-game losing streak.
