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A victory over Texas will secure Baylor a very sweet New Year
The Baylor Bears are out of the playoff hunt for a second consecutive season and there will be no third straight Big 12 championship.
That doesn't mean they can't have one sweet New Year.
If Baylor, behind third-string quarterback Chris Johnson, beats a banged-up Texas team in Saturday's regular-season finale at McLane Stadium, it will secure a berth in the New Year's Day Sugar Bowl by virtue of conference tie-breaker rules. This scenario assumes that Big 12 champion Oklahoma will earn a berth in the four-team College Football Playoff.
The Bears (9-2, 6-2 in Big 12) need a win to finish in a three-way tie for second with Oklahoma State and TCU. The Sugar Bowl berth goes to the league's second-place team. Through a series of conference tiebreaker rules, Baylor would emerge on top.
Baylor coach Art Briles, who was not happy at the end of last season with the Big 12's inability to declare one champion and then the CFP's exclusion of the Bears from the playoff, sounded quite pleased about the potential of Baylor invading the Big Easy.
"I'd be running as fast as I could to get it," Briles told reporters during his weekly press conference on Monday about the possibility of playing in the Sugar Bowl. "I'm not saying how fast that's going to be. But it's worth chasing."
Baylor has won four of the last five meetings against Texas and two in a row in easy fashion. Texas (4-7, 3-5) will be starting junior quarterback Tyrone Swoopes, his first start since the Week 1 debacle at Notre Dame that got him demoted. His replacement, redshirt freshman Jerrod Heard, suffered a concussion during the Thanksgiving loss to Texas Tech. He has been cleared to practice, but he will not start and might not play at all against Baylor.
"That's a huge bowl," senior offensive tackle Spencer Drango told reporters. "It's still part of the New Year's Six. I don't think we're going to get to one of our goals, to be in the playoffs, but a New Year's Six bowl is still really, really good.
"I'm looking forward to that. But we do have to take care of business first."
