Iowa State twice in three weeks?
I am incredibly surprised by the Big 12’s decision to have Oklahoma and Iowa State face each other in the penultimate week of the regular season. This makes no sense from the conference’s perspective.
These look to be clearly the two best teams in the conference and both will have a high ranking to open the year. Having them play early almost guarantees the league a top-10, marquee matchup that will draw the eyes of the country to it. With it coming late in the season, who knows what could happen before they collide.
The other aspect of it that seems to hurt the Big 12 is the fact that having these two teams potentially play twice in three weeks is bad for two reasons. The first is that it takes a little steam out of the conference title game nationally to see a match up you just saw two weeks prior – unless the game is fantastic.
The second being that the probability of the two teams splitting the meetings and thus leaving both with a late-season loss would be a disaster for the conference. If that happens, the Big 12 very likely doesn’t have a College Football Playoff team again in 2021, which would be an obvious mishap.
A break in the schedule coming for the Sooners?