Big 12 game of the year about more than title for Baylor, OSU

George Schroeder | USA TODAY Sports

If the schedule holds, the buses will depart Waco at 10 p.m. Friday. They'll arrive early Saturday morning, just in time for 90 Baylor students to pile out and grab prime spots in the audience for ESPN's College GameDay.

They'll wear green and gold and wave clever posters and Art Briles fatheads, and they'll bring along one of the mascot heads of Bruiser the Bear, in case Lee Corso picks the visitors. And Saturday night at 11 — not long after Baylor vs. Oklahoma State has ended — the buses will roll out again, headed for home with an ETA of 6 a.m. Sunday.

"It's one of the things you'd only do in college," Baylor athletic director Ian McCaw says.

All of this is one of the things you'd never have thought to see in college football. We have arrived at the biggest game in the Big 12 this season, and it is ... Oklahoma State and Baylor?

"It's not OU vs. (Texas) now," said Matt Burchett, Baylor's director of student activities, who put together the bus trip. "It's Baylor-Oklahoma State — but that's what makes college football fun, right?"

Exactly right. But the matchup still feels strange. Nationally, the hot topic is Baylor's rise from perpetual Big 12 doormat to No. 4 in the BCS rankings (and, with a victory Saturday in Stillwater, probably up to No. 3), with a legitimate shot at playing for the national championship. Given the Bears' history of futility — in the first 14 years of the Big 12 they won 14 conference games — it is an undeniably cool story. But a victory would also position No. 10 Oklahoma State to win its second conference championship in three years, after a 35-year drought.

Either story line is an abrupt departure from the Big 12's traditional narrative, but it fits into something Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy has been saying for several years: Parity is coming to college football. In the Big 12, it seems to have arrived. Where Oklahoma and Texas once annually battled for Big 12 supremacy, the Sooners and Longhorns have given way to the Bears and Cowboys. Baylor (9-0, 6-0) popped Oklahoma 41-12 two weeks ago. Oklahoma State (9-1, 6-0) dropped Texas 38-13 last week.

At least for now, the hierarchy has been reordered.

"The tradition of certain schools getting recruits and dominating is changing," Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said. "(Football is) completely different, not (played) between the hashes but sideline to sideline, and other schools can win. But it is different for college football fans to look and say Baylor and Oklahoma State are playing for the Big 12."

The breakthrough came in 2011, when the Cowboys won the Big 12 — their first conference title since 1976 — and narrowly missed playing for the BCS championship. Meanwhile, Baylor was winning 10 games, including a heartstopping home victory agaiinst Oklahoma. Robert Griffin III won the Heisman Trophy, in part because of his last-second touchdown pass to beat the Sooners.

McCaw calls 2011 "a catalytic year that turned the program around." Briles calls it "defining times." And both Baylor and Oklahoma State appear to have been built to last, with solid foundations. But Saturday's game could become a catalyst, and provide further definition to the Big 12's new look.

"There's a difference between being on top and being consistent," Gundy said. "You always want to stay humble, but from coast to coast people understand Oklahoma State football has become a legitimate Top 25 contender."

He added: "I think Baylor is going to be around for a while. That's not good news for the guys in our league, but it's great for our league."

And it's Burchett, the director of student activities for Baylor, who might have the best gauge of just how crazy things have gotten.

Time was, the idea of a bus trip from the Baylor campus might have been a stretch, even if the destination was the Bears' stadium across town. But Floyd Casey Stadium has become a destination this season; for the Oklahoma game Nov. 7, they took the tarp off a large swath of seldom-used end-zone seats — and then filled them on a Thursday night. They're adding as many as 1,200 temporary bleacher seats in anticipation of another capacity crowd for the Texas game Nov. 30. It'll be the last game at the old stadium before the Bears move into their new place next season, just across the Brazos River from campus.

"It was the best atmosphere we've had here at Baylor in the six years we've been here," said Briles of the Oklahoma game. "That's the thing I'm enjoying about this journey as we go through it as a university and a fan base. We're still crossing the bridges, learning and growing, trying to figure out how to be an elite football team, an elite fan base and an elite program.

"That's the thing I like: We're all in this journey together."

And the bus trip? An e-mail went out to Baylor students at 8 a.m. Monday. By the time the sale began at 10 a.m., dozens were lined up, ready to pay $75 for a 32-hour, 700-mile roundtrip package that includes a ticket to the game (face value: $95 — the trip's actual costs are being subsidized by the school), transportation, a meal or two and probably some lasting memories, if not much sleep. It only took 34 minutes to fill all 90 spots.

"That's unbelievable," Briles said, and then quickly amended: "It's unbelievably good."