In the new world of college football, some conferences haven't exactly made sense. Realignment has made games like Maryland/Rutgers and North Carolina/Pitt not only conference matchups, but matchups within a single division in a conference.
Among the Power Five conferences, the Big 12 is a dose of sanity in the new world of conferences and hardly regional conference games. Ten teams each play each other one time in conference season, eliminating the need for a potentially season-killing conference championship game and the crowning of a true champion.
That format has paved the way for what could be one of the most interesting debates in the first season of the College Football Playoff.
After a Saturday that saw teams like Auburn, Notre Dame, Michigan State, and Kansas State all but drop from playoff contention, there's a compelling battle brewing between the biggest conferences. In Tuesday's Selection Committee rankings, all five current power conference leaders figure to be in the top eight.
In the four weeks until playoff teams are decided, Oregon will likely play Arizona State and Alabama plays Mississippi State next week. Even teams like Nebraska and Duke, one-loss teams outside of the top 10, will probably get their shot at Ohio State and Florida State, respectively.
But likely sitting up in the top five or six teams will be two schools from the Big 12 — TCU and Baylor — who already played each other on Oct. 11. Baylor won perhaps the season's craziest game to date that day, a 61-58 contest that took over four hours to play and featured a 21-point fourth quarter comeback in seven minutes of game time for the Bears.
However, after Baylor lost the next week to a West Virginia team, Baylor fell further down the rankings. As a result, even after Baylor absolutely stomped Oklahoma on the road this weekend, TCU will almost surely stay ahead in the committee's rankings. After Alabama's escape at LSU in overtime and TCU's shellacking of Kansas State, the Horned Frogs could be No. 4 on Tuesday while not being in position to win the Big 12 title.
Thus, in the very first year of the College Football Playoff, there could be a situation very reminiscent of past BCS controversies, where teams were left out of the title game with head-to-head wins over adjacent teams in the rankings (Florida State over Miami in 2000), or when teams that didn't win their own conference or even division ranked above those that did (Nebraska over Colorado in 2001 or Alabama over Oklahoma State in 2011).
However, if both Baylor and TCU hold serve and finish at 11-1, the committee should pick the Horned Frogs over the Bears.
The committee hasn't really tipped off its hand to what its deciding factors could be, beyond the obvious, with one exception. "I've sat through the [committee] meetings, and I think it's pretty clear that strength of schedule is going to become very important," committee member Oliver Luck said in March. "Ultimately, it's going to boil down to the committee having a couple of one-loss teams you're trying to decide between. Maybe there's one available spot at No. 4 for three or four one-loss teams, and I think one of the first things the committee will look at is strength of schedule."
It's not like TCU set the world on fire with its out-of-conference schedule, but they did play another Power Five team in Minnesota in the second game of the season. Minnesota now has an unexpected outside shot to win the Big Ten West in the next few weeks, sitting at 7-2.
Meanwhile, Baylor once again played about as bad a non-conference slate as is humanly possible, playing two awful FBS schools in SMU and Buffalo, and FCS' Northwestern State. Even though West Virginia athletic director Luck might recuse himself from committee proceedings about the fellow Big 12 schools, other committee members have said as much about strength of schedule in prior statements. If the committee wants to put a positive impact on scheduling for the future, penalizing Baylor for an empty September could go a long way.
There's also the dubious nature of how the TCU-Baylor game was decided. With the score tied at 58, TCU's Corry O'Meally was whistled for a very questionable pass interference call with less than a minute left on 3rd-and-10 from the TCU 43. If that call isn't made, the game almost surely goes to overtime.
And finally, TCU is simply a better football team. While Baylor is again the top scoring offense in the country, TCU is right behind them in that statistic as well as more advanced, efficiency-based metrics.
TCU's defense has also looked better than Baylor's, adjusting for schedule strength and efficiency. Trevone Boykin has been even better than Bryce Petty at quarterback after a lackluster 2013, and the running game is much stronger behind a great line and new offensive coordinator Doug Meacham.
In the weeks to come, TCU has an easier road to a potential national semifinal, playing Kansas, Texas and Iowa State. Baylor's three remaining games are all at home, but Oklahoma State and Kansas State are both to come. While a lot could happen in those games, and all around the nation, the Big 12's top two are setting the stage for perhaps the biggest controversy of the young playoff era.
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