College football's most interesting lines, Week 12: Mourning the Big 12, an Army massacre, and Ohio State vs. Ohio State Lite
Oklahoma owes Kansas a fruit basket.
The Jayhawks washed the bitter memory of the Sooners’ aborted College Football Playoff push from the minds of fans everywhere by delivering Texas a loss that was infinitely more embarrassing. Kansas, a 20+ point underdog, went to Austin, took multiple double-digit leads, and eventually won when a walk-on playing the first offensive snap of his career plucked a two-point conversion from the sky.
It was glorious. Glorious enough to make us forget formerly 9-0 Oklahoma, by virtue of losing to Baylor, now has a transitive loss to a TCU team so frustrated by 2021 it forced the greatest coach in program history out the door. The Big 12 is currently an ouroboros of shame, a BMX wheel in which every broken spoke has briefly rotated off the ground as its rider totally shreds a local garbage dump in a fruitless effort to impress Aunt Becky. Behold, the miracle of Big 12 victory math:
Kansas > Texas > Texas Tech > West Virginia > Iowa State > Oklahoma State TCU > Baylor > Oklahoma > Kansas State > Kansas
Wonderful.
Also, bowl season kicks off this week. Catch me at the Culver’s Isthmus Bowl, taking place several miles from Madison, Wisconsin’s actual isthmus, for Wisconsin-River Falls vs. Washington University (St. Louis)! If you ever lack confidence in this life, just remember a debuting postseason game featuring the 22nd and 44th-best teams in Division III decided to kick off at the exact same time as a proper Wisconsin home game vs. a Big Ten opponent fewer than 10 miles away.
Anyway, let’s talk about the gradual fade of 2021’s college football regular season. All lines are provided by Tipico Sportsbook.