Today, TCU will finally play Iowa State, the worst team in the Big 12, and Baylor will finally play Kansas State, the best team in the Big 12 after Baylor and TCU. At that point, both the Horned Frogs and Bears will have faced each other and nine common opponents. ^[1]In addition to the remaining 8 teams in the Big 12, both TCU and Baylor beat SMU in nonconference play. The chart below shows how each team fared against those ten common opponents, treating Baylor/TCU as one team.

On the X-Axis is each opponent, in (roughly) descending order from left to right in terms of strength. For both Baylor and TCU, the other team was its toughest opponent, while Iowa State and SMU were the two easiest opponents both teams faced. On the Y-Axis is the home field adjusted margin of victory. Of note: TCU lost by 3 to Baylor, but the game was played in Waco, so both teams get a 0 for that game. TCU is represented by the purple dot below, with Baylor’s results displayed in green:

As you can see, Baylor has not yet played Kansas State, which makes it a little difficult to compare the resumes of the Bears and Horned Frogs. And while Baylor beat TCU on the field, that result holds less weight with me for a few reasons, including the fact that the game was a near tie and Baylor was the home team. Looking at the chart, the biggest advantage Baylor has relative to TCU is that the Bears destroyed Oklahoma, a team that TCU squeaked by against.

In fact, that’s really one of only two advantages for BU. The other is a blowout over Kansas, which normally wouldn’t be impressive if not for the fact that TCU struggled way, way too much in putting away a bad Jayhawks team. Of the other five common opponents ^[2]That is, ignoring the Baylor/TCU game, the Iowa State and Kansas State games which can’t be evaluated until tomorrow, and the Oklahoma/Kansas games, TCU holds a clear edge. Against the middle of the conference — West Virginia, Texas, and Oklahoma State — TCU fared about two touchdowns better in each game. The same could be said about the SMU game, but frankly, it’s irrelevant how much these teams beat SMU by. And against Texas Tech, Baylor escaped with just a two-point win, while TCU won by 50.

Of course, here’s another way to think about things. Throw out the meaningless SMU game, and let’s throw out the Texas Tech and Kansas games, since they somewhat cancel out, anyway. What we’re left with is Baylor holding on to a 3-point home win against TCU and a 37-point blowout over Oklahoma (compared to a 1-point win by TCU over the Sooners), versus TCU’s 4, 41, and 30-point HFA-adjusted wins over West Virginia, Texas, and Oklahoma State (compared to the -11, 24, and 18 put up by Baylor). That’s a pretty even resume.

If you want to break the tie with best win, you go with Baylor: after all, the Bears beat TCU.

If you want to break the tie with best loss, you go with TCU: a loss to West Virginia is worse than a loss to Baylor.

If you want to break the tie with head-to-head, well… I’m not sure I’m buying that. Consider an alternate reality where West Virginia beat Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas State, instead of having lost to those schools. At this point, West Virginia would obviously be viewed as a much better team, and things would be even murkier: West Virginia, Baylor, and TCU would all be 8-1 in conference play assuming wins today, and all would have a 1-1 record against the other two teams. At that point, Baylor’s head-to-head win over TCU would be useless.

If we say Baylor deserves to be ahead of TCU because of the head-to-head win, we’re implicitly arguing that because West Virginia is not that good — you know, the team Baylor lost to — Baylor should be rewarded. That’s pretty silly. Head-to-head works to break ties when you have uneven schedules, but not so much in this case. If Baylor lost to a team that TCU did not play, head-to-head would carry a lot more weight for me. If Baylor beat TCU in Fort Worth, head-to-head would carry a lot more weight, too. Since neither of those factors are true, I don’t think it’s appropriate to break the tie in favor of the Bears because Baylor lost to a mediocre team and beat TCU by 3 at home, while TCU beat a mediocre team and lost to Baylor by 3 on the road.

Here’s an even simpler alternate universe to consider: let’s pretend that Baylor beat West Virginia two months ago, but the 11-0 Bears then lose to Kansas State tonight. At that point, Baylor, TCU, and KSU would all be 8-1 and 1-1 against the other two schools. How do you break that tie? Surely you can’t still penalize TCU for losing to Baylor, anymore, as we now have a classic rock-paper-scissors game being played out on the Big 12 stage.

But if we don’t use head-to-head, what do we use? We could all be bailed out of a painful exercise in nit picking if Kansas State (or Iowa State) can pull off an upset tonight. Absent that — or a definitive Baylor blowout — it’s going to be pretty tricky.

Of course, to date, we have ignored the two non-common opponents each team has faced. Both teams faced an FCS school, and for what it’s worth, Baylor fared better in that game. ^[3]Baylor blew out Northwestern State, 70-6, while TCU “only” beat Samford by the score of 48-14. Both Northwestern State and Samford are good but not great FCS schools. In each team’s remaining game, Baylor blew out a bad Buffalo team by the score of 63-21, while TCU handled a pretty good Minnesota team, 30-7.

Minnesota is a borderline top-25 team, so is this a good tiebreaker for TCU? Not really: is a 23-point win over a pretty good team materially different than a 42-point win over a bad one? It’s more impressive, I’ll grant, but hardly the definitive word on the subject, at least for me.

No, when it comes to TCU and Baylor, there’s no need to engage in nit picking and pretend it’s something else. These two teams are about as even as it gets. TCU has the slightly better margin of victory numbers and may be the slightly better team, but from a resume standpoint (which is what voters should be looking at), these two teams deserved to be tied. Breaking the tiebreaker? You might as well flip a coin. Let’s hope that the two games today help us avoid having to do that.