BYU couldn’t have asked for a better bye week.
As the Cougars rested this past weekend, they slipped into sole possession of first place in the Big 12 thanks to some helpful chaos around the conference.
With Iowa State and Kansas State each suffering upset losses, Kalani Sitake’s crew appears to be the current league championship favorite.
Of course, there’s still a month of football left to be played to determine BYU football’s fate in 2024. However, the advanced metrics currently point to a happy ending for the Cougars.
ESPN Analytics uses a number of formulas — including Football Power Index (FPI), strength of record and more — to project specific outcomes for each individual college football game. I looked into the algorithm’s projections for each remaining Big 12 contest this season to determine how the end-of-year standings might shake out — and who will likely play for the conference championship on Dec. 7.
Listed below are the four current league leaders in the Big 12 and their respective remaining schedules.
Each game includes the present percentage chance ESPN Analytics gives the team to win that day, with the cumulative overall and conference records being tallied together based on what the algorithm decided.
I performed this same exercise two weeks ago, with the analytics at the time predicting a Big 12 championship game matchup between 12-0 Iowa State and 11-1 BYU. The lone projected Cougars loss was against UCF, who BYU ending up thumping on Oct. 26.
Injuries, coaching changes, newer game results and number of other factors will certainly cause these percentages to fluctuate over the coming weeks, but for now we’ll stick to what they say today.
While you should never fully put your faith into such data, any Cougar fans who consider themselves to be analytics believers may want to look into Texas travel for early December.
BYU
Current record: 8-0 (5-0 in Big 12 play)
Remaining schedule
- At Utah — 59.5% chance to win.
- Vs. Kansas — 64.2%.
- At Arizona State — 50.1%.
- Vs. Houston — 84.3%.
Analytics-based projected final record: 12-0 (9-0 in Big 12 play).
Iowa State
Current record: 7-1 (4-1 in Big 12 play)
Remaining schedule
- At Kansas — 55.0% chance to win.
- Vs. Cincinnati — 70.4%.
- At Utah — 63.8%.
- Vs. Kansas State — 56.2%.
Analytics-based projected final record: 11-1 (8-1 in Big 12 play).
Colorado
Current record: 6-2 (4-1 in Big 12 play)
Remaining schedule
- At Texas Tech — 63.8% chance to win.
- Vs. Utah — 73.4%.
- At Kansas — 53.7%.
- Vs. Oklahoma State — 76.2%.
Analytics-based projected final record: 10-2 (8-1 in Big 12 play).
Kansas State
Current record: 7-2 (4-2 in Big 12 play)
Remaining schedule
- Vs. Arizona State — 73.7% chance to win.
- Vs. Cincinnati — 70.6%.
- At Iowa State — 48.3%.
Analytics-based projected final record: 9-3 (6-3 in Big 12 play).
Analytics-based projected Big 12 championship game matchup
12-0 BYU vs. 11-1 Iowa State.
What are the Big 12 tiebreaker policies?
As shown in the above results, while ESPN’s analytics project Iowa State and Colorado to hold the same conference record at the end of the season, the Cyclones will be the ones to face off with BYU in the championship game.
This is due to the Big 12′s tiebreaker rules — in this case, Iowa State gets the nod over Colorado because the two teams’ highest-ranked common opponent in the conference standings would be Kansas State, who defeated the Buffaloes before later losing to the Cyclones.
According to the Big 12 rulebook, here is the conference’s newly-established list of two-team tiebreaker policies:
- Head-to-head competition among the two tied teams.
- Win percentage against all common conference opponents among the tied teams.
- Win percentage against the next highest placed common opponent in the standings.
- Combined win percentage in conference games of conference opponents.
- Total number of wins in a 12-game season.
- Highest ranking by SportSource Analytics.
- Coin toss.