Texas Tech maintained its perch atop the Big 12 standings on Saturday, and with two weeks remaining in the regular season, the Red Raiders are on course for a conference championship rematch with BYU if the Cougars can win out. And although that’s never a guarantee in this league, it could be the scenario that sends multiple Big 12 teams to the College Football Playoff.
The idle week started early in Lubbock, Texas, where the No. 6 Red Raiders plastered UCF, 48-9, on the heels of last week’s top-10 victory over BYU.
Texas Tech (10-1, 7-1 Big 12) dashed out to a 21-0 second-quarter lead before UCF even picked up a first down. The team’s second touchdown came courtesy of star linebacker Jacob Rodriguez, a high school quarterback, who took a direct snap two yards and into the end zone, where he struck the Heisman pose.
“Everybody’s talking about quarterbacks for Heisman,” Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire said after the win, “so we put (Rodriguez) at quarterback today, he scored a touchdown.”
Linebacker Jacob Rodriguez with his FIRST CAREER OFFENSIVE TD for @TexasTechFB ‼️
And he hit the Heisman as his celebration 👀 pic.twitter.com/zzOWSXR1Qr
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 15, 2025
Rodriguez followed that with a second-quarter interception, his fourth of the season, to go along with his team-high 100 tackles and FBS-best seven forced fumbles. The fast start allowed starting quarterback Behren Morton, hampered by a leg injury, to shut it down before halftime.
Go ahead and pencil the Red Raiders in for the program’s first-ever Big 12 championship game on Dec. 6. After a week off, Texas Tech closes out the regular season at West Virginia (4-7, 2-6 Big 12), where it will be a heavy favorite.
No. 12 BYU is looking like Tech’s likeliest challenger in the conference title game. The Cougars (9-1, 6-1 Big 12) toppled TCU 44-13 in Provo on Saturday to keep pace with Tech as the only other team with one loss in conference play. They held TCU under 300 yards of total offense and to just 1 for 10 on third downs, with freshman quarterback Bear Bachmeier completing 23 of 33 passes for 296 yards and one touchdown, plus another score on the ground.
hit em with the hesi @bearb47 😮💨
📺 ESPN pic.twitter.com/XeXeiI6U1O
— BYU FOOTBALL (@BYUfootball) November 16, 2025
BYU heads to No. 25 Cincinnati next week before finishing with UCF at home. Texas Tech holds the head-to-head tiebreaker, but the Cougars control their own destiny and can lock down a second chance at the Red Raiders if they win the next two.
That’s because Cincinnati suffered one of the more disheartening defeats of the weekend, losing 30-24 at home to Arizona. The Bearcats (7-3, 5-2 Big 12) will fall out of the CFP rankings after suffering a second consecutive loss in conference play and their first defeat of the season at Nippert Stadium, managing only 189 yards of total offense over the final three quarters.
The loss puts a damper on Cincinnati’s showdown against BYU on Saturday, which could have pitted a pair of ranked, one-loss Big 12 foes against each other. It’s still a massive game — the Bearcats can play spoiler and inject some chaos into the final weekend with a bounce-back win — but Cincy no longer controls its path to the Big 12 championship, and any momentum is gone after back-to-back letdowns.
Instead, Cincinnati dips to the crowd of teams with two Big 12 losses, joining No. 13 Utah (8-2, 5-2 Big 12), Houston (8-2, 5-2 Big 12) and Arizona State (7-3, 5-2). All four of them are still mathematically alive in the conference race but will need to win out and get some help to reach the title game, including with tiebreaker scenarios.
BYU only has one conference loss but will likely need to win out through the Big 12 title game to secure a spot in the College Football Playoff. (Rob Gray / Imagn Images)
For now, the question is how all of this impacts the CFP conversation, and whether the Big 12 can put multiple teams into the 12-team field — something it couldn’t do last season.
There’s definitely a chance. If Texas Tech takes care of business against West Virginia on Nov. 29, the Red Raiders would be 11-1 and presumably in the top five of the CFP rankings. Even a loss in the Big 12 Championship Game would seem unlikely to boot Tech out of an at-large bid at that point, and the Big 12 winner would almost certainly become one of the five highest-ranked conference champions.
But what if it’s a Texas Tech-BYU rematch and the Cougars take their second loss of the season? Is a BYU team that enters championship weekend near the bottom of the top 10 with two losses to Texas Tech good enough for an at-large? Maybe, depending on how the other conference races shake out. But the Cougars, whose odds to make the field sit at 15 percent according to The Athletic’s model, won’t get any SEC-style benefit of the doubt. BYU has an impressive win over Utah, but its resume is otherwise lacking, including a weak nonconference slate. It would probably come down to those new scheduling metrics. The more two-loss teams that come out of the SEC and Big Ten, whether they make the conference championship or not, the worse that is for the Big 12.
The wild card is Utah (8-2, 5-2 Big 12), which throttled Baylor 55-28 and currently sits one spot below BYU in the CFP rankings. The Utes have a pair of quality losses to Tech and BYU, but their best wins are at home against Arizona State and Cincinnati. That doesn’t scream “Playoff worthy.”
Yet in a hypothetical scenario where BYU wins out, narrowly defeating Texas Tech in an instant-classic Big 12 championship that sends both teams to the CFP, mixed with utter chaos elsewhere that leaves a pile of three-loss power-conference teams in its wake … could 10-2 Utah sneak into the Playoff as an at-large for a three-bid Big 12?
No, probably not. But this is college football, and the Big 12. So one way or another, something strange is bound to happen.