BOULDER — Tiebreakers didn’t fall in favor of Colorado on Saturday as all three teams tied with the Buffaloes atop the Big 12 standings collected wins, leaving CU on the outside looking in at next weekend’s Big 12 championship game.
Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders’ Buffs (9-3 overall, 7-2 Big 12) thus finished in a four-way tie atop the final regular season standings with Arizona State, Iowa State and BYU.
Arizona State and Iowa State ended up with the tiebreaker edge and will play for the league championship Saturday in Arlington, Texas.
Still, CU’s conference finish is the best non-divisional finish since CU and Nebraska tied for the Big 8 title in 1991.
The Buffs’ hopes were alive until the final game of the night. But they needed Houston to upset BYU to advance to the championship game and BYU took a 30-18 win.
Now, the Buffs will await a bowl bid, with the matchups scheduled to be announced next Sunday.
This year’s bowl pairings will have a slight wrinkle. All former Pac-12 teams now in the ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten will retain prior bowl affiliations. Those Pac-12 bowls include the DIRECTV Holiday Bowl, Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl, SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl, LA Bowl Hosted By Gronk, Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl and Valero Alamo Bowl.
Of that group, the Alamo Bowl has the first pick from the Big 12 and Pac-12 pool, followed by the Holiday, Las Vegas, Sun, LA and Independence bowls.
While there is no guarantee of where the Buffs will land, there’s no doubt Coach Prime and the Buffs will be a highly sought selection. CU has been one of the most-watched teams in the country week in and week out and has two of the nation’s biggest stars in Heisman Trophy favorite Travis Hunter and quarterback Shedeur Sanders.
Bowl committees will clearly be eager to add that star power and the accompanying national spotlight to their matchups.
A bowl victory would give Colorado 10 victories, something the program has achieved only twice since 1996 (10-3 in 2001 and 10-4 in 2016). It’s been 20 years since the Buffs won a bowl game, as they have lost their last four bowl appearances (2005, 2007, 2016 and 2020). Their last bowl win came in 2004 when Gary Barnett’s Colorado team beat UTEP, 33-28, in the Houston Bowl.
