On the College Football Podcast with Kevin Negandhi, Kirk Herbstreit and Daivid Pollak the topic of the Big 12 football was on the docket. The Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns have come under much scrutiny after their performances for completely different reasons. The Sooners dropped their game after leading 35-14 late in the third quarter. The Longhorns found themselves down 15 with 3:13 left and were able to force overtime. The Longhorns outscored Texas Tech 23-0 in the final minutes and in the extra session.
In their playoff predictor section of the podcast Kirk Herbstreit dropped Texas from his top four, replacing them with Miami. The Longhorns are currently looking at 28% chance to make the playoff according to their All-State playoff predictor as they updated on the podcast.
Death, Taxes, OU defense stinks. These are things that come to fruition every single year. Here is the thing, zero points in the fourth quarter for OU’s offense. We can lay this on the feet of the defense, but you can’t get outscored to end the game 20-0. – David Pollack on Oklahoma
They won the game. It was as ugly as it could be but they won the game. We will see what they do from here. What this does with the Big 12 and how they have looked, how erratic they’ve been. I think this opens up the discussion about Group of Five. – Herbstreit on Texas and the Big 12
He went on to say that he believed that the Big 12 stumbling out of the gate has opened the door for the G5 schools and the Pac-12 even with all of their issues as they get ready to ramp up for football. The Big 12 could be creating an opening for the SEC to get another team in. Or possibly a Big Ten, a Pac-12 or a Group of Five school.
Much like Herbstreit mentioned, the committee might be a little weary of putting another Big 12 team in the playoff to watch them get “undressed” on national television. This isn’t the first time that this conversation has been had, last year Oklahoma lost to Kansas State and still made it to the playoffs.
For Texas, they need to start style pointing wins. Chalk the Texas Tech game up to a bad game all around. Fix the fundamentals and start punishing teams for them to get into a run. Easier said than done, but that is likely what is going to have to happen for the Big 12 to return to the playoff.