College Football Playoff rankings deliver clear message to BYU and the Big 12

Just one more regular-season game on the schedule, and one-loss BYU remains on the outside of the playoff picture in the most recent edition of the College Football Playoff rankings.

The BYU Cougars, standing with a 10-1 record out of the Big 12 Conference, remain outsiders to what would be the official bracket if the postseason began today. It's a story beaten to death by now under the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains: the ACC and Group of 5 are especially weak this season -- no Boise State supremacy in the year 2025 -- so the cutoff line for at-large teams is that 10th spot currently owned by the 9-2 Alabama Crimson Tide.

The Big 12's standing in the greater college football landscape is dwarfed under the looming frame of the Big Ten and SEC. This is reality, no matter how unequal. As ESPN (our favorite network these days) is both the host of the Playoff and holds the rights to broadcasting the most lucrative football conference in America (the Southeastern Conference), there exist obvious reasons for the playoff committee to act in the best interest of that very league.

The SEC has been lobbied for for decades as the end-all-be-all greatest football league college sports have ever witnessed. They move the chips in the modern age of college football, and that's why we witnessed the Texas-Oklahoma defection just a few years ago. Without its strongest brands, the Big 12 was left to pick up the pieces from the fractured Pac-12 and the cream of the American Conference, and has lost much of its luster in the eyes of the non-partisan nation.

The SEC now has five (FIVE) teams in the current playoff bracket, four of which would enter as at-large bids. The Big Ten has three. The remaining spots in the 12-team bracket are reserved for the Big 12 champion, and the two highest-ranking champions after that (likely the AAC and ACC, not necessarily in that order).

BYU's standing at 11 is intentional. It's deliberate. It's a clear message hand-delivered to Brett Yormark, Brian Santiago, and Kalani Sitake. The message? If BYU wants to play for the national championship this winter, they'll need to win their league outright.

That's an absurd bar to clear for a team with the 6th-rated resume (by ESPN, no less), the most wins over bowl-eligible teams in the nation (six, four of which were played on the road), and just one loss, which came at the hands of the fifth-ranked team in football, Texas Tech, in Lubbock.

Alabama is given the benefit of the doubt for losing to 5-6 Florida State. Oklahoma is given the benefit of the doubt for getting blown out by 16th-ranked Texas. Notre Dame began the season 0-2, and has feasted off one of the weakest schedules among Power Four teams, as their strongest resume-boosters are close losses to Miami (ranked behind the Irish for unclear reasons) and Texas A&M.

Related: BYU's Greg Wrubell unleashes irritation at College Football Playoff inequality

The bar is set higher for the Big 12 Conference. It just is. It's absurd to ask BYU to have a better season than they have. It's unthinkable to look at the Cougars' body of work and determine that the name-brand underperformers deserve that at-large spot. But unless one of the top 10 teams falls from grace on rivalry weekend, the Big 12 Conference game could be BYU's only way in.