Tramel: Bob Bowlsby would enjoy an OSU-Baylor Big 12 football championship game
Berry TramelOklahoman
STILLWATER — Underdog OU could beat OSU on Saturday night in a Bedlam showdown of top-10 teams. Wouldn’t be a big surprise. But OSU appears to have the superior team.
Texas Tech could upset Baylor, I suppose, though it seems unlikely, considering the Red Raiders are still licking their wounds from the Cowboys’ trip to Lubbock, and Baylor trumps Tech by a mile anyway.
And if the Cowboys and Bears indeed win two days after Thanksgiving, setting up an OSU-Baylor showdown in the Big 12 Championship Game next week in Arlington, you know where the party is.
Bob Bowlsby’s house.
The Big 12 commissioner will stage a feast. Turkey legs all around in honor of the conference’s dream scenario after the summer of ‘21.
The chance of no Sooners in the Big 12 Championship Game. The Longhorns a laughingstock. And the whipped cream on the pecan pie is Cincinnati and Brigham Young, future Big 12 members who are ranked in the top 15.
All in all, it’s been a glorious autumn for a conference that was staggered by the July news that OU and Texas had pledged to join the Southeastern Conference.
“I don’t think it could have gone any better for what we all thought was pretty doom and gloom back when all this took place,” Mike Gundy said Monday of the Big 12’s revived status.
The sum of all Bowlsby fears was an OU-Texas title game. It’s a tall task of Bowlsby to remain dignified with two universities that, after 25 years of mostly getting their way in the Big 12, threatened the very existence of the conference.
Heck, it's not just Bowlsby. All Big 12 ports, from Morgantown to Manhattan, from Fort Worth to Ames, are thrilled at the prospect of an OSU-Baylor title game. They're flying orange and black, green and gold, hoping the crimson gets creamed Saturday night at Boone Pickens Stadium.
Of course, the ‘Horns quickly played themselves out of such a possibility and have gone almost eight weeks without winning. Bowlsby still was stuck with the potential of doing what he’s done every December since the conference revived the championship game: hand the Big 12 trophy to Lincoln Riley on the floor of JerryWorld.
And it still could happen. The Sooners are a proud bunch. They won’t yield the scepter easily. OU looked out and down a year ago but clawed its way back to Arlington and beat Iowa State for the championship.
That was in the days before the Sooners were caught with lipstick on their collar. Before Bowlsby called the OU/Texas alliance with the SEC a “betrayal.”
But Bowlsby kept his head while his anger simmered. With predictions of the Big 12’s demise, or at least its fall from Power 5 Conference status, Bowlsby not only recruited four relative-quality new Big 12 members but reminded America that some of the holdovers knew what to do with shoulder pads.
“They have good brands,” Bowlsby said a few weeks ago of his Big 12 holdovers, “because they’ve been good over the years, and I think people know that.
“Mike Gundy’s had good football teams at Oklahoma State for many years. The consuming public knows that.”
Truth is, the Big 12’s competitive future, even without OU and Texas, seems as solid as the Pac-12's or Atlantic Coast Conference’s. The new College Football Playoff rankings, released Tuesday night, figured to have as many eventual-Big 12 teams (four) as the Big Ten and the eventual-expanded SEC. The Pac-12 and ACC? One each.
“One thing that I said when this started back whenever, in August I guess, the first thing I said was I knew Oklahoma State would be OK,” Gundy said. “Beyond that, I didn’t have any idea because I didn’t know what direction we would go with realignment, conferences and different things.”
The direction was Cincinnati, BYU, Central Florida and Houston (which itself is banging on the door of the top 15), to go with some solid football brands.
The Big 12 will miss the financial clout that OU and Texas provided. The Big 12 will miss OU’s annual playoff contention.
But as the 2021 season shows, Big 12 football is not Oklahoma and the nine dwarfs.
OSU and Baylor are the two legacy Big 12 programs in the best position to fill the Sooner void. Over the last dozen years, they rank 2-3 in conference-game record: OU is 88-19, OSU 71-35, Baylor 60-46, Kansas State 60-46.
Chances are, Bowlsby will be handing football championship trophies to OSU and Baylor in the future. And Bowlsby will be overjoyed if he starts the hardware transition next week in Arlington.
