Saturday did not play out how BYU had hoped. In a 29-7 drubbing on the road, BYU football looked completely overmatched in their first taste of top-10 action. Whether BYU was really that bad, Texas Tech was really that good, or the truth lies somewhere in between, there is just no denying that the Cougars left Lubbock licking their wounds and suddenly very vulnerable to the will of the College Football Playoff Selection committee.
It's a tough break for a BYU team that had reached the 8-0 mark for the second straight season, and has jostled the Cougars' national foothold. With this loss, they likely slide from the CFP Poll top 10, and will be teetering on the cliff of playoff inclusion. Drop below 10 this season, and the ACC and G5 champions could bump a team like BYU from their at-large standing.
That would be a horribly challenging pill to swallow.
So Texas Tech stands back at the top of the Big 12 Conference. Big deal. With only one loss, BYU still controls its destiny and stands before a runway to the conference championship game -- a likely rematch with the Red Raiders -- but that slate has only grown more foreboding with every passing week.
At the onset of the season, BYU's schedule was viewed as one of the easiest in all of the Power Four, with the three-week stretch of Utah, Iowa State, and Texas Tech standing as the most brutally challenging incline on Kalani Sitake's expedition. While that initial diagnosis was accurate -- those were the toughest opponents on the Cougars' schedule -- the road ahead is still riddled with potholes, no matter how deep.
BYU football schedule: Games 10-12
vs. TCU (6-3)
@ Cincinnati (7-2)
vs. UCF (4-5)
The next three weeks of competition will be a major test of endurance for most teams in the country, not just BYU. Georgia will face a dangerous Georgia Tech team in the final week, not to mention a potential top-10 matchup with Texas this coming week. Those Longhorns will also have to square off against A&M before the season expires. Any number of upsets could happen on any given week to any team -- need I point to Indiana's narrow escape against an already shattered Penn State? Perhaps the joint stumbling of Louisville and Virginia this past weekend, the previous frontrunners to claim the ACC?
This unpredictability is what scares me most about the Cougars next three contests. On paper, BYU should be essentially home free, booking a flight to Texas for the weekend of December 6, but they still have to face a sneaky TCU team (thankfully in Provo), a road challenge against a Cincinnati team that would take the Cougars' place as second in the conference with a win, and the dreaded final game of the season, where everything would be on the line if the team wins out to that point. No matter how outmatched UCF may seem, no win is guaranteed in the ever-shifting Big 12 Conference.
This was a schedule that was supposed to be a breeze if BYU were half as good as last season's bunch. But those teams have exceeded expectations and will have the BYU date circled with a big red marker on their calendars. Suddenly, everything is uneasy. Unstable. Uncertain.
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Did BYU lose its chance at a College Football Playoff berth on Saturday? No, let's not be so dramatic. But did BYU narrow its margin for error to a sliver? Absolutely. A two-loss BYU team likely doesn't breach the bracket as an at-large. Whether they deserve that spot or not is a different question; the Cougars won't sneak in unless their only loss is to Texas Tech.
I believe that an 11-2 BYU football team makes the Playoff -- two losses to the same dominant team is essentially one loss -- but the Cougars can't afford to relive the events of the 2024 season. One more loss, and BYU football will have fallen short for the second straight year.