It is unfortunate for fans — but not necessarily for the Big 12 — that the 2023 Big 12 Championship didn’t feature an Oklahoma football rematch with the College Football Playoff-bound Texas Longhorns.
Instead, what fans got was a Texas blowout over a much inferior Oklahoma State team made possible because Oklahoma mostly sleepwalked to a loss against OSU when those two teams met in late October. The Sooners suffered a 27-24 loss to the Cowboys. Oklahoma and O-State ended up with identical conference records (7-2) in second place in the Big 12 standings.
Because of that and because of Big 12 tiebreaker rules — head-to-head outcomes were at the top of the tiebreaker criteria — Oklahoma State won the spot opposite the Longhorns in the Big 12 Championship.
Who is to say whether the outcome of an OU-Texas championship game would have turned out differently, but what it would have done is created more intrigue and probably a larger list of storylines, not the least of which would be a championship game between two teams that are leaving the Big 12 for the SEC after this season.
There shouldn’t be any question that Oklahoma was the second-best team in the Big 12 this season and the only team in the conference other than Texas to reach double digit wins this season. Numerous college football analysts in early October were projecting after OU’s win over Texas in the annual Red River Rivalry game that the two teams would meet again in the Big 12 Championship.
That would have set up a classic rematch similar to the 2018 Big 12 title game between the same two teams, only this time it would have been the Longhorns seeking revenge from the earlier loss. In 2018, the Sooners were able to avenge an earlier loss to Texas and win their 12th Big 12 championship.
Here is a statistical comparison between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State this season (national ranking in parentheses). They say numbers don’t lie, so you be the judge for yourself on which team would have posed a better matchup with Big 12 champion Texas.
Oklahoma Oklahoma State
CFP ranking 12 22
Scoring offense 43.2 (3) 29.5 (53)
Scoring defense 22.3 (41) 29.0 (90T)
Rushing offense 180.6 (36) 156.9 (65)
Rushing defense 147.8 (58T) 174.0 (103)
Passing offense 321.8 (6) 264.2 (37)
Passing defense 242.2 (99) 267.5 (122)
Total offense 502.4 (5) 421.2 (42)
Total defense 389.9 (79) 441.5 (120)
3rd-down conversion offense 49.4% (9) 37.9% (77)
3rd-down conversion defense 30.4% (14) 42.2% (98)
Turnover margin +11 (6) +3 (47T)