The Big 12 is the one major conference without a championship game on the first Saturday in December, but the conference does have two big games coming up that will settle its automatic BCS bid, with three teams still in the mix, and determine if the league might get an at-large spot in the major bowls.
The bright lights of ESPN Gameday are coming to Stillwater, where Saturday night’s Baylor-Oklahoma State game (8 PM ET, ABC) will be the showcase game of the week. And why not? The Bears are ranked #4, undefeated and still hoping to slip into the BCS National Championship Game. The Cowboys are #10, and in strong position to make it into the major bowls regardless of what happens on Saturday.
Baylor can’t just think about the national picture though, because there in the midst of a hot race for what would be their first conference championship since 1980, when the program was still in the old Southwest Conference. The Big 12 also has a good shot at gaining a second bid into the major bowls, and finally there’s a race for the league’s top non-BCS game, the Cotton Bowl, which offers the opportunity to play a high-level SEC opponent.
The Big 12 may be out of the national championship picture with Kansas State’s shocking 52-24 loss at Baylor on Saturday night. But the game underscored just how good this league is from top to bottom and both its conference title race and bowl picture are very much up in the air with two weeks to play. There’s a Fiesta Bowl bid on the line, a possible at-large slot in the BCS and a host of quality bowls against Pac-12 & Big Ten competition mixed in. Today we’ll try and sort out some Big 12 bowl projections.