ARLINGTON, Texas — After then-No. 8-ranked Texas Tech squashed No. 7 BYU 29-7 some 330 miles away from here a month ago, the Red Raiders somehow knew that they were not done dealing with the upstart Cougars, who have only been in the Big 12 for three seasons.
While the rest of the country was writing off BYU after Kalani Sitake’s team suffered its first and only loss of the year in front of a massive national television audience, ESPN’s “College GameDay” crew, and sold-out Jones AT&T Stadium, coach Joey McGuire’s squad was showing what Sitake later called “incredible sportsmanship and class” to the crestfallen Cougars.
“After the game, we’re shaking hands, and half of the (TT) players were saying, ‘We will see you guys in a few weeks,’” Sitake said. “They basically respected us enough to know that we were going to get back (to Texas). It was really cool. That interaction (inspired) our guys to go out and play well the next three games to get another shot at this amazing team.”
The BYU players chosen to speak to reporters after the humiliating defeat — receiver Chase Roberts, linebacker Jack Kelly and safeties Tanner Wall and Raider Damuni — basically relayed the same story of how Tech stars such as Jacob Rodriguez and Behren Morton told them on the field that the Cougars were still the best team they had played.
Then BYU (11-1) went out and proved it, downing TCU, Cincinnati and UCF to get to its first Big 12 championship game, where it will face 11-1 Texas Tech on Saturday (10 a.m. MST, ABC) at sold-out AT&T Stadium in front of what is expected to be the largest crowd to ever watch a college football conference championship game, somewhere in the neighborhood of 85,000.
Aside from Texas Tech’s players and coaches, tons of respect still hasn’t come to the Cougars, who are now No. 11 in the College Football Playoff rankings and almost certainly have to beat the No. 4 Red Raiders to get into the CFP.
Texas Tech is a 12.5-point favorite, and ESPN’s FPI gives the Red Raiders a 67% chance of winning.
“This is, arguably, the second year in a row in which BYU was clearly the most overlooked team in the country,” wrote ESPN’s David Hale.
Mostly silent on the would-be snub — BYU fell from No. 7 to No. 12 in the CFP rankings after the loss in Lubbock and only moved up one spot after three double-digit wins — until the past few days, Sitake started campaigning and mildly playing the disrespect card hours after he agreed to a contract extension to stay at BYU on Tuesday, turning down serious overtures from Penn State.
“I am just going to be honest, it is a little disrespectful,” Sitake said regarding how ESPN hosts barely talked about BYU’s résumé in the last two selection shows. Last Tuesday’s show left BYU out of a graphic comparing the résumés of No. 9 Alabama, No. 10 Notre Dame and No. 12 Miami.
Sitake and some of BYU’s defenders on a national level, including Aaron Torres of Fox Sports Radio, have noted that every other 11-1 team in the history of the playoff era has been ranked inside the top 10, while BYU is not. Detractors often point out that the way BYU lost at Texas Tech — with a huge national spotlight upon them — has been stuck in their minds for a month, despite the Cougars winning their next three games by a combined 63 points, while the Red Raiders have continued to wreck every opponent in their path.
Can the Cougars channel that disrespect into motivation on Saturday in what is arguably the most important football game in school history since the 1984 national championship season? Or will that even matter, seeing as how Texas Tech is “the best team in the country,” in Sitake’s estimation?
Noted Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark on Monday: “Our best two teams are certainly playing in our championship game.”
BYU is seeking to win its first conference championship since 2007, when it was in the Mountain West. The Cougars were an independent from 2011-22.
In the past 30 years, no one-loss team in a power conference has been ranked as low as No. 11 BYU in the Associated Press Top 25 survey at the end of the season, according to research done by Jeff Fuller, a BYU fan who resides in the heart of SEC country, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
“I think the emotions are going to be incredibly high,” former BYU tight end Dennis Pitta said on BYUtv’s “BYU Sports Nation” on Friday. “You are going to be extremely motivated to have a better showing than you did the first time around in Lubbock, and the emotion of getting their head guy back, and the love and emotion they have for him as their head coach are going to run extremely high. I just hope that the execution and the preparation will be able to match that emotion.”
What will drive Texas Tech on Saturday? Win or lose, the Red Raiders are in the playoffs, according to most experts. If they keep their top-four ranking, they will get a first-round bye and be in the quarterfinals. That’s motivation enough.
“We pushed all our chips all the way in this year, and we feel like it has paid off,” said McGuire. “I am excited, and it is going to be an incredible game. The stadium will be packed.”
What if BYU wins? Will the Cougars get TT’s spot in the top four? That’s probably a pipe dream, given the lack of respect the Big 12 as a whole has received from the committee. If BYU gets into the top eight, it will host a first-round playoff game Dec. 19 or 20.
“From our perspective, we want it a lot more,” Wall said. “This means so much to us and to our coaches and to our program and to our fans, and so we’re going to go out there and execute. We have a lot of belief and trust in all of our guys and we know that we’re going to play our best.”
Whether that will be enough remains to be seen.
