Baylor's Briles rips Big 12; do Bears, TCU have shot to make CFP?

Baylor is happy about winning the Big 12 title, but upset about sharing it with TCU. (USATSI)

FORT WORTH AND WACO, Texas - Forget One True Champion in the Big 12. Does the Big 12 have one true playoff team?

Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby handed out two trophies Saturday in Texas. The TCU experience was pleasant and uneventful. The Baylor experience? Not so much.

Baylor coach Art Briles declared his team to the crowd as the only Big 12 champion. The night ended with Bowlsby and Briles engaged in an animated conversation on the podium about the Big 12 presenting co-champions to the committee, a fact No. 6 Baylor doesn't like because it defeated No. 3 TCU back in October.

'If you're going to slogan around and say One True Champion, and all of a sudden you're going to go out the back door instead of the front?' Briles said. 'Don't say one thing and do another. That's my whole deal. If they had said from the get-go we've got co-champs, head to head doesn't matter, I'm OK with it. I'm not obligated to him. I'm obligated to Baylor University and our football team. We just happen to be part of the Big 12 and we happen to be the champion two years in a row, so they need to be obligated to us because we're helping the Big 12's image in the nation.'

Responded Bowlsby via text message about his interaction with Briles on the podium: 'Too many people in a small space and hard to hear. Our rule says they are co-champions. He doesn't want to accept that I cannot change the rule to suit his wishes.'

Good luck and God speed, College Football Playoff selection committee. The Big 12 is already fighting with itself before the picks have come out.

'I thought there could be one big group hug,' Baylor athletic director Ian McCaw said, laughing. 'I was waiting for that to break out.'

Deep in the heart of Texas, 12 committee members are sitting in a boardroom with every resume for six viable playoff teams. They need to pick four.

No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Oregon appear to be safely in the playoff. No. 3 TCU and No. 6 Baylor shared the Big 12 title after wins over Iowa State and No. 9 Kansas State, respectively. No. 4 Florida State remained undefeated by beatingNo. 11 Georgia Tech. And No. 5 Ohio State crushed No. 13 Wisconsin despite the Buckeyes playing with their third-string quarterback.

'I'm sure the committee members have considered this scenario and were perhaps hopeful it wouldn't occur, but it did,' Bowlsby said. 'They have some tough decisions to make.'

Meanwhile, quietly under the radar Saturday, Oklahoma State's Tyrek Hill returned a punt 92 yards for a touchdown with 45 seconds left to force overtime as the Cowboys beat No. 20 Oklahoma. The significance: Bob Stoops may have cost both Baylor and TCU another top-25 win.

'Yeah, I'm nervous,' Bowlsby said. 'I want the best outcome for the Big 12. But I also have a stake in the playoff and I have confidence in the people in the room to do what they think is best. I'll be able to sleep tonight because I believe TCU has a much better loss than Ohio State.'

When asked if he believes Baylor remains in the mix, Bowlsby said, 'The fact they played an excellent opponent today is going to strengthen their strength of schedule and the fact TCU played a team lower in the league is going to soften their strength of schedule, and that's going to close the delta between the two of them I'm sure.'

Baylor beat TCU 61-58 on Oct. 11 by rallying from a 21-point deficit in the fourth quarter, but the committee up to now has liked TCU's resume better. Speaking on ESPN on Saturday morning, committee chairman Jeff Long said again that the head-to-head matchup between TCU and Baylor hasn't 'come into play yet.'

TCU's Gary Patterson accepts the Big 12 trophy with less agitation than Baylor's Art Briles. (USATSI) The case for TCU

In the past three weeks, Ohio State has served as a buffer for the head-to-head debate by getting ranked between TCU and Baylor. On Saturday, the Buckeyes possibly made a statement to the committee about their entire team by blowing out Wisconsin a week after losing quarterback J.T. Barrett.

For weeks, Minnesota had become a public debate in the TCU vs. Baylor debate. TCU beat Minnesota 30-7 at home on Sept. 13, and Baylor doesn't have a comparable nonconference opponent. Ohio State beat Minnesota 31-24 on the road on Nov. 15.

TCU coach Gary Patterson avoided much politicking after TCU's 55-3 rout of woeful Iowa State. 'I'm not going to stand on a podium and a platform because I think the way we played, how we talk already speaks for itself,' said Patterson, who noted that being upset over something describes UAB losing its football team.

The closest Patterson came to campaigning was wondering aloud what if Arizona and Oregon hadn't played again Friday night in the Pac-12 Championship Game. Oregon won 51-13 for the Pac-12 title after losing to Arizona back in October.

Baca Juga

'Arizona beat them head to head and they beat them at their place,' Patterson said. 'So is Oregon not a good football team?'

TCU played an uninspiring first half on offense for a 17-3 lead before exploding for 31 points in the third quarter. Any anxiety in Carter Stadium disappeared 66 seconds into the second half for a quick score and TCU rolled to 722 yards, including 460 passing yards and four touchdowns by Trevone Boykin, who also caught a 55-yard score.

'Here's what I told them: Quit worrying about style points,' Patterson said. 'I thought they were a little too tight. So just go win a championship, just go play.'

Few people know style points quite like Patterson, who reached the Rose Bowl in 2010 with a perfect record out of the Mountain West Conference.

'One of the reasons why I've had a lot of patience in this playoff thing is this: TCU has been sitting outside the circle through the years,' Patterson said. 'I mean, we had to be patient. We had to win all our ballgames. The two most nervous games I had were (Kansas) and today this whole season. They were like my last six or seven years in the Mountain West Conference because you knew you had to win every game and win them with style points and do it all a certain way. Now we're in a conference where everybody knows you're good at what you do.'

The case for Baylor

After Baylor's 38-27 win over Kansas State, Baylor was hanging its hat on two wins over current top-10 teams (TCU and Kansas State) plus the head-to-head win over the Horned Frogs.

'If you play Tiger Woods and he beats you by four strokes, he's four strokes better than you,' Briles said. 'I could say I double-bogeyed one, I hit one out of bounds. It doesn't matter. Either you win or you didn't win.'

Bowlsby has said in recent weeks the Big 12 won't pick one champion based on a tiebreaker to present as its champ to the selection committee. Winning a conference title is one of the factors the committee considers.

Yet in July at Big 12 media days Bowlsby said, 'We're always going to apply a tiebreaker to determine who our champion is, because we have to put forth a representative to one of the bowl games. So even though the records may be exactly the same, there's either a head-to-head competition with the same record or there's a tiebreaker imposed. So we always are going to get to the point of a true champion.'

On the Big 12's website, it says that effective June 2014 'the following procedure will determine the Big 12 Conference representative to the Sugar Bowl (or alternate College Football Playoff game when the Sugar Bowl is a semifinal) in the event of a first-place or alternate place tie (for the avoidance of doubt, only Conference records will be used throughout the process): a. If two teams are tied, the winner of the game between the two tied teams shall be the representative.'

McCaw, Baylor's AD, was more diplomatic than Briles while saying he disagreed with Bowlsby's position. 'We feel we're the one true champion and we'll wait and see what the committee thinks tomorrow,' McCaw said.

The Big 12 and ACC want the option to eliminate the NCAA rule requiring divisions and have a title game. 'Certainly, there will be a lot of discussion (about the championship game waiver request) regardless of who makes the playoff,' McCaw said. 'I think it'll start being talked about Monday at our Big 12 meetings in New York.'

Briles explained his conversation with Bowlsby on the podium this way: 'If I'm the commissioner of the league, then these universities are his kids, I would think, so you love 'em all the same. But sometimes you have to differentiate between who you present as 1 and 2. That was kind of the gist of the conversation.'

Baylor boosters watched the press conference from the back of the room and reveled in Briles sticking up for the program. Briles quipped that if he gets out of line, prominent booster Bob Simpson will pay his fine.

'Get your money's worth,' Simpson hollered to Briles.

Briles certainly did that. Patterson made his points in a far more understated way.

Now, after six weeks of mock rankings, it's the committee's turn to finally speak with one true voice. God help the Big 12 after whatever it hears.