KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There’s still a chance for Kansas State to make the Big 12 Championship Game, which provides a path to the College Football Playoff as the league champion.
It requires a win at No. 17 Iowa State and at least two other highly unlikely losses among the league’s other 6-2 teams — Colorado versus Oklahoma (0-8 Big 12), Arizona State at Arizona (2-6 Big 12) and BYU versus Houston (3-5 Big 12).
The Wildcats may need even more help beyond that in the muddled Big 12 title-game picture.
The complete details of the tie-breaking scenarios aren’t entirely clear, but the most likely outcome is that K-State heads to a non-playoff bowl when the dust settles this weekend.
And that’s still a big deal for a program that was once rated among the worst in NCAA history.
Kansas State reached one bowl game in its first 81 years, a loss in the 1982 Independence Bowl against Wisconsin.
But the Wildcats have now reached a bowl game in 25 of the last 32 seasons, including 11 in a row from 1993-2003 under Bill Snyder and eight in a row from 2010-17 during Snyder’s second stint as head coach in Manhattan.
K-State has qualified for a bowl in five of Chris Klieman’s six seasons.
The truncated COVID-19 season in 2020 is the lone exception, and the current four-season bowl streak is a non-Snyder record for the program, which demonstrates that the program is in great hands under Klieman.
The Liberty Bowl against an SEC opponent in Memphis, Tennessee, is the most popular bowl projection for the Wildcats, but another intriguing possibility would be Mizzou in the Texas Bowl.
K-STATE BOWL PROJECTIONS
CBS Sports: Liberty Bowl vs. Arkansas (Dec. 27)
ESPN Bonagura: Texas Bowl vs. Texas A&M (Dec. 31)
ESPN Schlabach: Rate Bowl vs. Rutgers (Dec. 26)
The Sporting News: LA Bowl Hosted by Gronk vs. UNLV (Dec. 18)
Sports Illustrated: Texas Bowl vs. Missouri (Dec. 31)
USA Today: Liberty Bowl vs. Florida (Dec. 27)
Action: Liberty Bowl vs. Texas A&M (Dec. 27)
Athlon Sports: Liberty Bowl vs. Florida (Dec. 27)
College Football Network: Liberty Bowl vs. Mississippi (Dec. 27)
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