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Should Texas Tech football be a lock to make the CFP?
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- Should Texas Tech football be a lock to make the CFP?
The dust has settled a bit on the regular season, and the Texas Tech football team has put all its cards on the table.
In a game that was already laughable, Joey McGuire and the Red Raiders (11-1, 8-1) were running fake punts against West Virginia. Being in the Big 12 Conference, seen as an inferior product to the SEC and Big Ten, Texas Tech needed all the style points it could get.
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To be honest, the Mountaineers never really had much of a chance in the game, at least from a pure talent standpoint. West Virginia's best shot at making it a game was catching the Red Raiders slipping. Texas Tech had already locked up a spot in the Big 12 title game on Friday night, and Saturday's blowout win didn't seem to have many stakes involved.
But there were stakes involved. A loss to the Mountaineers would have greatly hampered Texas Tech's chances of getting a favorable seed or potentially an at-large bid into the College Football Playoff.
Next week's title game rematch with BYU should, feasibly, now just be Texas Tech's next game and not the only game to determine their CFP fate. Entering the week, the Red Raiders were 5th in the latest CFP projections and could move up into the Top 4 thanks to Texas A&M's loss to Texas.
Texas Tech wants it all. It built a team to achieve it all. Now it's all in front of them.
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The big question going into the next week is whether or not the Red Raiders can book their ticket to the CFP, whether they beat BYU again or not.
A few things work in Texas Tech's favor in this regard. The biggest is recent history. Last year, SMU was projected as the ACC champion, firmly in the CFP field, then lost the conference title game to Clemson. Citing a need to make sure league championship games remain meaningful, the Mustangs still got into the CFP.
The Mustangs were ranked No. 8 entering that ACC title game and fell to No. 10 in the final rankings to get into the field.
Texas Tech is ranked much higher than SMU was this time last year, and should feel even more comfortable with its position regardless of the outcome of next week's game.
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That doesn't mean the Red Raiders are for sure in. There's always the SEC propaganda machine (*cough, cough* ESPN) that will try to amplify the conversation about the Big 12's inferiority to the SEC, that Texas Tech's one loss to Arizona State (minus their starting quarterback in a four-point game) is somehow worse than the Longhorns' loss to Florida and looking downright dreadful most of the season.
And wouldn't that just be the ultimate cherry on top of Texas Tech's little-brother syndrome with Texas: losing to BYU in the title game and getting leaped by the Longhorns to be left out of the CFP entirely?
While that doesn't seem feasible, it has to be considered. Texas Tech should feel like a lock for the CFP, but this is college football, where shenanigans are the name of the game.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Did dominant regular season lock up CFP berth for Texas Tech football?
