Baylor in The College Football Playoff? There's a Good Possibility Now

The Baylor Bears went on the road and destroyed Kansas, 61-6, on Saturday in the regular-season finale. Baylor sits at No. 9 in the College Football Playoff rankings heading into the weekend, and it's not far-fetched for them to make the four-team playoff. Here's why.

• Baylor has only one setback this season, a 34-31 loss to Oklahoma in which Baylor had a 25-point lead during the game.
• The dominoes have begun falling ahead of the Baylor Bears (11-1), who will play the Oklahoma Sooners for the Big 12 Championship next weekend. Here's what happened already this weekend:

• No. 5 Alabama (now 10-2) lost to Auburn
• No. 8 Minnesota (10-2) lost to No. 12 Wisconsin

Baylor's win on Saturday, combined with those losses from Alabama and Minnesota, ensures the Bears will most likely move up at least two spots to No. 7. Meanwhile, No. 6 Utah and No. 7 Oklahoma have both won. Here is what needs to happen for Baylor to make the playoff.

• Baylor beats Oklahoma in Big 12 title game
• No. 2 LSU beats No. 4 Georgia in SEC title game
• Utah loses to Oregon in Pac 12 title game
• The CFP committee doesn't have any other favorites to leapfrog Baylor

That's it. A Baylor loss, though, would not get the Bears in the conversation, but it would give Oklahoma more opportunity.

Baylor's non-conference schedule might seem as nonchalant as a Texas Class 6A high school walk in the park through an easy non-district schedule. The Bears beat Stephen F. Austin, UT-San Antonio and Rice before heading off a Big 12 schedule of Iowa State, Kansas State, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State to begin 7-0 in the season.

As Baylor kept winning, other teams ahead of them kept losing, both in conference and around the country. Baylor beat West Virginia, 17-14, and then beat TCU in Fort Worth, 29-23, to set up a showdown in Waco with the Oklahoma Sooners. GameDay brought its traveling roadshow, and everything tilted toward the Bears.

Baylor built a 25-point lead that seemed insurmountable, until Oklahoma decided to surmount it. The Sooners came back to win that game.

Baylor bounced back with a win over Texas, 24-10, in a game the Bears controlled from the start. In fact, Texas scored on the last play for its only touchdown of the game to make it closer than the score indicated.

Baylor then went to Lawrence, Kansas, and crushed the Jayhawks on the final game of regular season.

Now, if things fall just right, Baylor could find themselves in the CFP.