Welcome to the Big 12 Buzz! Things are going to look a little different during the offseason but that doesn’t mean I can’t share what’s on my mind this week in the Big 12. Of course, with the playoff in full swing, that is going to be the focus today.
Texas Tech’s Letdown
I have been let down several times in the past few months alone. Between a local brewery closing, spilling a nice bourbon on my pants to the point where it looked like I pissed myself and now I have Texas Tech blowing the Orange Bowl to kick off 2026.
Hard Rock Stadium has seen their fair share of bad football this season thanks to the Dolphins, but Texas Tech took that torch and ran with it. Their offense pulled a complete no show to the point where I don’t think they even left Lubbock.
Behren Morton threw two costly interceptions and the offense as a whole turned it over four times. Every time Texas Tech got any sort of momentum, they shot themselves in the foot.
They couldn’t run the football or even get a push at all against Oregon. To make matters worse they were more scared to throw the football than my wife is of spiders and she’s willing to burn the house down if she finds a spider in it. Texas Tech hasn’t been shutout in four years, and it’s been nearly a decade since we have seen a team not score a single point in a playoff game.
I know the scoreboard looks bad but if you watched the game at all without still being drunk from New Year’s Eve then you could see that Tech’s defense played their ass off. They held Oregon to 309 total yards and completely shut down their rushing attack. The only reason Texas Tech even stood a chance in that game late was because the defense continuously bailed the offense out of bad situations.
It seems like all anyone wanted to talk about was how much money Tech spent this offseason. One could argue that it paid off by winning the Big 12 but I think it’s fair to wonder if some of that money should have been spent on getting a better quarterback.
The Perception of the Big 12
With Texas Tech’s loss, it certainly didn’t help the Big 12 get that bad taste out of their mouth. It’s been over three years since the conference has won a playoff game and the last team to do it was TCU when they beat Michigan. And what do people remember about that TCU team? Getting blown out on the biggest stage imaginable.
Last year, Arizona State represented the Big 12. They were picked to finish dead last and ended up winning the conference and even earned themselves a first round bye. But many people felt like they were just lucky to be there and that team was a double-digit underdog when they faced Texas in the Peach Bowl.
Nobody gave that Arizona State team a chance and all they were asked was to keep it respectable. Well, they were a fourth down stop away from pulling off a miracle. But this Texas Tech team was different. They were a better team, and the expectation was championship or bust. Tech wasn’t asked to keep it close, they were asked to win.
It looks bad when you have a team run all over the conference, set records in the process and that team not only fails to win a playoff game but lose by 20 plus. As bad as the loss was on Thursday for Texas Tech, it was an even bigger loss for the Big 12.
More Playoff Games on Campus
One of the good things that came out of the playoff expansion is having first round games on campus. While the games this year weren’t the greatest, the atmospheres were. From Norman to Eugene, every stadium was packed, loud and full of passion.
It’s bad enough that we start the season with these crazy kickoff games inside NFL stadiums. Do we really need Chick-fil-A or Aflac to sponsor a game between two random teams in some big city? I don’t care about your overpriced chicken sandwiches or the scam called insurance, the more of these games we have, the less games we get on campus where they belong.
The same can be said for these old BCS bowl games. Does the Rose Bowl need to be involved in every single playoff to get their precious time slot for a sunset? Absolutely not. We need to stop letting these bowls control college football. It’s not 2006 anymore, things have changed.
It’s crazy to me for a team like Indiana to have to go to Pasadena and Atlanta before they even can get to Miami for the national championship game. As the one seed, they should be playing Bloomington up until the very end. What’s the point of locking up the top spot if you can’t even get a game on campus?
It’s not fair to the team, the school, or the fans which college football seems to care about less by the year. I couldn’t imagine having a family, seeing my team make it all the way and having to pay for three different trips in a span of a month. Unless you are well off or plan to sell a kidney, good luck.
A few of the things I love about college football are the atmospheres, the tradition, and the pageantry of it all. It’s what makes college football great and what separates it from the NFL. Taking away these games from campus is just flat out wrong and quite honestly un-American. Damn it, I love this country and I love college football and I will not sit here and tolerate these stupid bowl suits continue to put their greedy paws where they don’t belong. Merica.
