Does BYU Still Have a Playoff Path?

BYU's door to the College Football Playoff is still open — barely. It runs through Arlington, and it needs help from Texas Tech, Houston and Oklahoma State. Plus: why Bear Bachmeier's four-interception day won't define him.

BYU's road to Arlington: three games to win, then the Big 12 title game. (AI-generated illustration)

Yes, BYU still has a real path to the College Football Playoff. It is narrow, and it starts Saturday against Baylor. The Cougars fell 28-20 at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Nov. 7 after leading 20-14 at halftime. Four second-half turnovers and no second-half points sent them to 7-2 overall and 4-2 in the Big 12.

"We have to rally back from this," coach Kalani Sitake said afterward. He told his team its goals are still there, but now it needs help. Here is exactly what that help looks like.

The line isn't No. 12. It's No. 11.

Fans talk about "getting into the top 12," but this year's format makes the real at-large line tighter. The playoff stayed at 12 teams for 2026, with a new rule: the champions of the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12 get automatic bids no matter where they're ranked. One more automatic bid goes to the highest-ranked team from the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 or Sun Belt.

In the first CFP rankings on Nov. 3, Boise State at No. 25 was the only one of those teams ranked. That bid comes from well below the line, so it effectively takes the No. 12 spot. A power-conference champion ranked outside the top 12, from an upset in a title game, would push the line up again. Notre Dame also gets a guaranteed spot if it finishes in the top 12.

BYU went into the Holy War at No. 9 in those rankings, right on the bubble. Notre Dame was No. 11, and Ohio State was No. 12, the first team out. A second loss almost certainly drops the Cougars below the line when the committee's next rankings come out Tuesday, Nov. 10.

Path 1: Win the Big 12 and take the automatic bid

This is BYU's best road, and it is more open than it looks. A Big 12 title is an automatic bid, regardless of ranking. To get there, BYU has to finish second in the league standings and then beat the team that finishes first in the Big 12 Championship Game on Friday, Dec. 4, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

How the Big 12 crowns its champion. The regular-season standings don't decide the title. They only decide who plays for it: the first- and second-place teams, with tiebreakers settling any ties. The winner of the Dec. 4 championship game is the Big 12 champion and gets the automatic playoff bid. That means second place is all BYU needs to get to Arlington. Once there, even an unbeaten Utah has to win one more game to claim the title.

Here is the race after Saturday. Utah leads at 6-0. Texas Tech is 5-1 after a 53-48 shootout win over West Virginia. Behind them is a five-way logjam at 4-2: BYU, Arizona, Houston, Oklahoma State and Baylor. Houston beat Cincinnati 31-24, Oklahoma State routed Kansas State 66-28 and Baylor beat Iowa State 42-31.

What BYU has to do

1. Beat Baylor at home on Nov. 14.
2. Win at Kansas on Nov. 21.
3. Beat Cincinnati at home on Nov. 28.
4. Then beat the first-place team, most likely Utah, in Arlington on Dec. 4.

What has to happen around BYU

1. Texas Tech has to lose at least once. The Red Raiders play at Oklahoma State, at Baylor and host TCU on Thanksgiving night. One loss drops them to 7-2, and BYU wins that tie (more below).
2. Houston has to lose at least once. This is the one that's easy to miss. Houston is 7-2 overall and plays at Colorado on Friday, Nov. 13, at West Virginia on Nov. 21 and hosts Baylor on Nov. 28. If Houston wins out and ties BYU at 7-2, Houston wins the tiebreaker. The two teams don't play, so it goes to common conference opponents: UCF, Utah, Cincinnati and Baylor. Both lost to Utah, and both would have beaten Cincinnati and Baylor. The difference is UCF. Houston beat the Knights; BYU lost to them in double overtime on Oct. 24. That loss is still costing the Cougars.
3. Oklahoma State has to lose at least once. The Cowboys host Texas Tech on Nov. 14, then play at Arizona State and host Kansas. If they win out, a tie with BYU goes deep into the tiebreaker list and could go either way. Because the Cowboys and Red Raiders play each other, one of them is guaranteed a loss.
4. Utah has to stay in first. The Utes beat BYU head-to-head, so BYU can't win a tie with them. Utah can lose once and still finish first at 8-1. Only if the Utes lose two of their last three would they drop into the 7-2 pack, and that would hurt BYU, not help.

Two contenders BYU handles itself. Beating Baylor on Saturday gives the Bears a third league loss. And BYU beat Arizona 28-17 in September, so it wins any tie with the Wildcats.

Why BYU wins a tie with Texas Tech

BYU and Texas Tech don't play each other, so there's no head-to-head result. The Big 12's next step is each team's record against common conference opponents: Arizona, Arizona State, Cincinnati, Baylor and TCU.

This is where Cincinnati matters. The Bearcats beat Texas Tech 37-24 on Oct. 24 for the Red Raiders' only loss. BYU is 3-0 against the common group so far and still plays Baylor and Cincinnati. If BYU wins out, it finishes 5-0 against those teams. Texas Tech can do no better than 4-1. So a BYU–Texas Tech tie at 7-2 goes to BYU, no matter which game Texas Tech loses. That holds in a three-way tie with Arizona, too, because the Big 12 drops a team that lost to everyone else in the tie, and Arizona lost to both.

The bottom line: BYU needs a perfect November plus three losses elsewhere: one by Texas Tech, one by Houston and one by Oklahoma State. One of those losses is guaranteed on Nov. 14, when Texas Tech plays at Oklahoma State: whichever team loses checks a box for BYU. Then the winner of that game still has to lose once more. And Baylor, which plays Texas Tech and Houston after it leaves Provo, is the team best positioned to help BYU. Pro Football Network's model put BYU's chances of reaching the Big 12 title game at 17.9% after the Utah loss, before Saturday night's other results came in.

The Big 12 Race

Who plays whom before Arlington

The top two in the Big 12 standings meet Friday, Dec. 4, at AT&T Stadium. Records are as of Nov. 8.

Team	Big 12 (overall)	Nov. 13–14	Sat., Nov. 21	Thanksgiving weekend
Utah	6-0 (9-0)	at Arizona	at TCU	vs. West Virginia (Nov. 27)
Texas Tech	5-1 (8-1)	at Oklahoma State	at Baylor	vs. TCU (Thu., Nov. 26)
BYU	4-2 (7-2)	vs. Baylor	at Kansas	vs. Cincinnati (Nov. 28)
Houston	4-2 (7-2)	at Colorado (Fri., Nov. 13)	at West Virginia	vs. Baylor (Nov. 28)
Arizona	4-2 (7-2)	vs. Utah	at Kansas State	vs. Arizona State (Nov. 28)
Oklahoma State	4-2 (6-3)	vs. Texas Tech	at Arizona State	vs. Kansas (Nov. 28)
Baylor	4-2 (6-3)	at BYU	vs. Texas Tech	at Houston (Nov. 28)

Games to watch for BYU fans: Texas Tech at Oklahoma State (Nov. 14), Houston at Colorado (Fri., Nov. 13), Texas Tech at Baylor and Houston at West Virginia (Nov. 21), and Baylor at Houston (Nov. 28). Baylor is the swing team: after Provo, it plays both Texas Tech and Houston. Kickoff times for Nov. 13–14 are expected early this week.

Path 2: An at-large bid at 10-2

This is the long shot. If BYU wins out but doesn't get that help, the Cougars finish 10-2 and sit home on Dec. 4. Then it's up to the selection committee, which announces the field on Sunday, Dec. 6.

The Deseret News called an at-large bid all but impossible. Pro Football Network's model gives BYU a 28.9% overall playoff chance, and says a 10-2 BYU could still make a case. For that case to work, several things have to break:

• Chaos above BYU. Saturday helped. Two teams ranked right around BYU took third losses: No. 10 Ole Miss fell 42-7 at Georgia, and No. 12 Ohio State lost 41-28 at home to Oregon. Ohio State coach Ryan Day said afterward his team likely won't make the playoff. But No. 13 Tennessee crushed No. 6 Kentucky 34-6 and will climb, and Alabama and Texas both won. BYU still needs more teams above it to lose.
• No surprise conference champions. The Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12 champions get in automatically, no matter where they're ranked. If a team ranked, say, 15th pulls an upset in its title game, it takes a playoff spot that would have gone to the next-best team in the rankings. That's exactly the spot a 10-2 BYU would be fighting for.
• The committee rewards BYU's best win. BYU beat Notre Dame 28-24 on Oct. 17. That win looks better after the Irish knocked off No. 1 Miami 31-24 Saturday night.

There's a catch in that last point. Notre Dame is now 8-1 and almost certainly jumps over BYU on Tuesday. The committee weighs head-to-head results only when two résumés look comparable, and a one-loss team with a win over No. 1 doesn't look comparable to a two-loss team. BYU's remaining schedule — Baylor, Kansas and Cincinnati — won't add much résumé strength, either.

The honest read: Path 2 needs a lot of help. Path 1 needs three specific losses by other teams, which is a lot, but every one of them is a real possibility.

Sidebar

Bear Bachmeier: Every Great Quarterback Has a Day Like This

Any BYU playoff path runs through its sophomore quarterback, and Saturday was the hardest day of his career. Bear Bachmeier threw four interceptions against Utah. He had thrown four in BYU's first eight games combined.

The first half showed who he is. Bachmeier hit Legend Glasker for a 75-yard touchdown and led a 20-point run that put BYU ahead 20-14 at the break. Then Utah's defense changed the game, sitting in tight man coverage and bringing pressure. Bachmeier completed just four of his last 13 passes for 27 yards. Two interceptions came in the final five minutes: one on third-and-goal from the Utah 2, and one in the end zone in the last seconds. He finished 21 of 35 for 272 yards and ran for a team-high 59.

He wasn't made available to reporters afterward, and teammates described a quarterback taking the loss hard. Sitake didn't try to talk him out of that. "Bear's being really hard on himself, and I think it's OK," his coach said.

Across social media and in the BYU community, much of the reaction has been the same: he'll learn from it. Not all of it has been kind, and piling on a sophomore for one bad afternoon solves nothing. History is on his side.

• Tom Brady, 2003. In the season opener, the Patriots lost 31-0 at Buffalo. Brady threw four interceptions, the worst game of his career to that point. New England didn't lose again for the rest of the regular season, finished 14-2, beat Buffalo 31-0 in the finale and won Super Bowl XXXVIII.
• Peyton Manning, 2007. Manning threw a Colts-record six interceptions at San Diego, five in the first half. He still drove his team into position for a game-winning field goal before a late miss. The Colts finished 13-3.
• Brett Favre, January 2002. Favre threw six interceptions in a playoff loss to the Rams, still the most in a playoff game in the Super Bowl era. His later take, with a grin: if he'd stayed in the game, he could have thrown eight. He's in the Hall of Fame.
• Trevor Lawrence, January 2023. In his first NFL playoff game, Lawrence threw four interceptions in the first half and Jacksonville fell behind the Chargers 27-0. He kept firing, threw four touchdown passes after halftime, and the Jaguars came all the way back to win 31-30 on a field goal as time expired.

The great ones all have a game like this. What separates them is the next one.

Knocked down, and getting up

Sports teach a lot of lessons, but the one that lasts longest is this: you will get knocked down, and what matters is that you get up. Not quickly, not perfectly — just again. Then you go back to work.

Bachmeier has already shown the part of this that can't be coached. He's a competitor who kept firing until the final snap, and who cared enough that the loss broke his heart. That's not a flaw to fix. It's the raw material.

He gets his first chance to answer on Saturday against Baylor. Whether or not the playoff math breaks BYU's way, how he plays the next three games will say more about him than four throws at Rice-Eccles. Give him room to have had a bad day. Then watch what he does with it.

Sources

• AP via Yahoo: BYU needs help with CFP, Big 12 title chances
• Deseret News: 3 takeaways from BYU's loss to Utah
• Deseret News: When it mattered most, Utah rose and BYU crumbled
• KSL: Utah picks off Bachmeier twice in the fourth
• Pro Football Network: BYU playoff probability
• Pro Football Network: Big 12 tiebreakers explained
• NCAA.com: How the 2026 College Football Playoff works
• College Football Playoff: First 2026 rankings
• NCAA.com: Week 10 recaps and results
• Yahoo Sports: Texas Tech beats West Virginia 53-48
• Texas Tech Athletics: Postgame notes at Cincinnati
• ESPN: Houston 31, Cincinnati 24
• Oklahoma State Athletics: Cowboys beat Kansas State 66-28
• Yahoo Sports: Notre Dame 31, Miami 24
• Eleven Warriors: Ohio State falls to Oregon 41-28
• Eleven Warriors: Ryan Day postgame
• Arizona Athletics: 2026 schedule
• University of Houston: 2026 schedule
• Wikipedia: 2026 Baylor Bears football schedule
• Boston Globe: Bills rout Patriots 31-0 (2003)
• NFL.com: Chargers survive Manning's six interceptions (2007)
• Packers.com: Favre on his six-interception playoff game
• ESPN: Trevor Lawrence overcomes 4 INTs, leads Jaguars back from 27-0

AI tools assisted in the research and drafting of this article. Featured image generated with AI.