Joel Klatt breaks down College Football Playoff advantage between Big 12 vs Big Ten West

One of the great things about college football is that because there are so many teams at the FBS level, sample sizes are small. So, there is debate about who is actually the best. Analysts like Joel Klatt spend the season arguing hypothetical scenarios and debating which team is best. In the College Football Playoff era, this has only been exacerbated.

On his show, Breaking the Huddle, Joel Klatt took questions from fans. One of those questions was, does the Big 12 or a two-loss Big Ten West champion have a better chance of making the College Football Playoff?

“I’m gonna go with Big 12 on this one,” Joel Klatt said. “And the reason is that West champ is still gonna have to compete with what I think is gonna be an incredible team that makes it out of the East.”

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“We’ve got Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State–let’s not forget, in particular with their new run game. And they would have to face that team in the Big Ten Championship.

“Meanwhile, in the Big 12, you’ve got three teams that I think are gonna be really good by the time we finish this season. Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas, all three of them in my top-10 currently,” Joel Klatt said. “We saw the potential of Texas in that loss against Alabama. Oklahoma State, they’re going to continue to be well–excuse me–continue to play well on offense and be explosive. And OU, if they’re as balanced and tough on defense as what we saw against Nebraska last week, then the sky’s the limit for the Sooners. So, I would go Big 12 over Big Ten West in that scenario.”

In the case where a two-loss Big Ten West team managed to win the conference championship game, it would be interesting to see what the playoff committee would do with them. After all, the Big Ten is one of the two best-respected conferences, but the West is often thought of as a weak division. Besides that, no team has ever made the Playoff as a two-loss team.

At this point, though, we don’t even know if the fourth Playoff spot is going to come down to this scenario. But it’s these debates that continue to make the sport entertaining.