The Baylor Bears can make it two straight wins in bowl season for the Big 12, after Texas football got past the Utah Utes in the Alamo Bowl.
The start to the postseason for the Big 12 went about as poor as any Power Five conference this year. In their first four games of bowl season, the teams representing the Big 12 went winless. It wasn’t until the Texas football program downed the No. 11 ranked Utah Utes in the Alamo Bowl on Dec. 31 by the final score of 38-10 that the Big 12 even got their first win of the postseason.
The struggles for the Big 12 in the postseason all started out with the Oklahoma State Cowboys falling short against the Texas A&M Aggies in the Texas Bowl. Head coach Mike Gundy and his Oklahoma State team lost by a narrow margin of three-points, by a score of 24-21 in the Texas Bowl.
Then, it was junior quarterback Brock Purdy and the upstart Iowa State Cyclones that couldn’t take care of business against the No. 15 ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the Camping World Bowl. Notre Dame dominated Iowa State and won 33-9.
Maybe the most embarrassing loss for the Big 12 in the postseason came from the only team in this conference to ever make it into the College Football Playoff. The Oklahoma Sooners were never even close to beating the No. 1 ranked LSU Tigers, and were sent out of the Fiesta Bowl in a 63-28 massacre in a Playoff Semifinals game.
The fourth and final loss to date for the Big 12 in the postseason came by a more narrow margin than Oklahoma or Iowa State. The Kansas State Wildcats lost to the No. 23 Navy Midshipmen in the Liberty Bowl 20-17. Kansas State’s loss to Navy on Dec. 31 was more of the nature of Oklahoma State’s to Texas A&M in the Texas Bowl than the Big 12’s other two losses.
But then it was the Texas Longhorns football program downing Utah in the Alamo Bowl by a 28-point margin that gave the Big 12 its first bowl win of the season. Texas was also one of the biggest underdogs of any Big 12 team in bowl season, but still got the best of head coach Kyle Whittingham and the Utes.
Last but not least for the Big 12 in bowl season is the Baylor Bears, who will take on the SEC runner-up Georgia Bulldogs in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1. The Sugar Bowl is the final bowl game of New Year’s Day. It is also the last of the New Year’s Six Bowl games, outside of the College Football Playoff National Championship Game between No. 1 LSU and the No. 3 Clemson Tigers.