I'm looking forward to it, unless it's the Huskers getting upset
I really will think it's karma when a huge upset happens in the Big 12
It happened in the Big 12 back in the day quite often, and there's no need for it to happen now that they have a round robin schedule
Do you think the Sooners needed the bump they recieved for playing the Horns and beating them in the champ game?
or would they have been voted the 4th slot w/o that game?
I think that would have been an awfully close call between 12-1 B1G Champion tOSU and 11-1 B12 Champion OU.
Oklahoma still would have obviously had the "better" loss. They lost by 3 to a top-15 team at a neutral site. The problem for the Sooners would have been that they would have had definitely less quality wins. tOSU and OU wins over final CFP top-15 teams (assuming no redemption for OU over Texas in the B12CG):
- tOSU over #3 Michigan by 23 at home
- tOSU over #12 Penn State by 1 on the road
- OU over #16 WVU by 3 on the road
- tOSU over #22 Northwestern by 21 at a neutral site
- OU over #24 ISU by 10 on the road
Looking at that list, OU has a big problem. Ohio State's signature win is VASTLY superior to anything they can offer and Ohio State has the second (blowout over NU) and third (close over PSU) best wins. Oklahoma's close win over WVU and their 10 point win over ISU would be clearly inferior to all three of Ohio State's wins over ranked teams.
In comparing the two teams Ohio State would have an advantage over Oklahoma in both quantity and quality of wins over ranked teams. Oklahoma would simply have to hope that the committee valued their "good" loss enough to put them ahead of the Buckeyes with their better wins and worse loss.
That is a really fundamental question of which you think is more important:
- Getting good wins (Ohio State wins), or
- Avoiding bad losses (Oklahoma wins)
We've had that debate here probably 100's of times and I think we are fairly evenly split. I have to imagine that the 13 member committee would probably also be pretty evenly split and it would probably come down to a 7-6 or maybe 8-5 type decision and I think it could go either way.
As it happened Oklahoma's 12 point win over #15 Texas gave them the same quantity as Ohio State and rough parity in quality so I think the bad loss was the deciding factor.