At the midpoint of the college football season, which teams are still alive in conference races and have a lot to say about the way in which their respective leagues will be remembered?
In the SEC, it’s Texas A&M. In the Pac-12, California and Oregon are part of that discussion. In the Big 12, Kansas State and West Virginia will need to rebound from recent weeks. Continued improvement by Texas following the win over Oklahoma would give the league a boost as well. Yet, no team seems to hold the key to the conference at the level Oklahoma State does.
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The college football season seems to be taking a deep breath at the moment, doesn’t it? In weeks eight and nine, the sport features very few high-stakes matchups and five-star confrontations. In the short term, it feels like a waste, but there’s a purpose to such scheduling. (Keep in mind, too, that some matchups — Ole Miss at Auburn, for instance — were supposed to be huge collisions, but have fizzled due to the struggles of one or both teams in the pairing.)
The payoff for late-October weekends largely bereft of electric encounters is that November, the stretch run of the season, will be loaded with important and defining battles. This is as it should be. You want to clean out the lopsided conference matchups in October so that November will be a month to remember.
Gunpowder, treason, plot, the whole shebang.
In November, then, the various conferences have indeed backloaded their schedules. This is what we want, right?
Recall all the years in which Miami and Florida State would play in early October? Hurricane fans never minded, because Miami usually benefited from playing the Seminoles earlier in the season. The Canes weren’t as ambitious in terms of what they tried to do with their offense. Florida State needed more time to get its machine humming at peak capacity. Had that rivalry been staged at or near the end of the regular season, Bobby Bowden probably would have won a couple more national championships.
The larger point is this: College football generally benefits and sees a better product when its biggest games are played later in the season. There’s less guesswork involved in terms of the identities teams have established. There’s less reason to say that one team (maybe both) must refine and practice some of its methods. Those are September and early-October issues. In November, there’s no place to hide. You have become what you have become, and that version of a team must test itself in fire against a formidable opponent.
It is college football at its delicious best, and that’s what we’re about to see in the Big 12, among other leagues.
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Oklahoma State, in November, will play TCU and Baylor and Oklahoma. No hiding, no shelter in the storm, no limits. For this reason alone, the Cowboys are the Big 12’s main season shaper. Baylor and TCU deserve to be seen as the top dogs in the league until proven otherwise. Unlike OU — which must go to Waco to play Baylor — Oklahoma State gets both the Bears and TCU at home. Mike Gundy’s team barely avoided losses at several points along the way, sliding by Texas due to a Longhorn punting gaffe and nipping Kansas State at the wire to complete a 15-point comeback. Now that the Pokes are still unbeaten, though, they will have to dramatically elevate their level of play against the big boys in the league.
Against TCU’s extremely vulnerable defense, Mason Rudolph needs to play his best game of the season. Against Baylor’s insanely consistent offense, the Cowboys have to find a way to force turnovers while also winning enough third-and-five situations to get off the field in the first half, such that the Bears can’t generate runaway momentum.
Against the BU-TCU-OU trio, will Oklahoma State go 3-0? That’s College Football Playoff territory.
2-1? New Year’s Six, here we come.
1-2? That’s still a 10-2 season with one particularly memorable win.
0-3? That would rate as a genuine disappointment.
Four paths, four possibilities, four ways in which the depth of the Big 12 — in the upper half of its 10-team structure — will be perceived.
How will the season unfold? Oklahoma State could offer all sorts of answers.
