BYU still controls its own destiny in the Big 12. What are the odds that it wins out?

Here’s the good news, Cougar fans — BYU still controls its own destiny this season, even after a somewhat shocking loss to Kansas this past weekend.
The less encouraging news? Such Big 12 championship destiny requires Kalani Sitake’s squad to defeat red-hot Arizona State on the road this Saturday, and then take care of business at home against a Houston team still fighting for bowl eligibility on Nov. 30.
While there are other scenarios in which chaos around the conference would back the Cougars into AT&T Stadium on Dec. 7, BYU’s easiest path to playing for the league crown is just to win in each of the next two weeks.
Of course, that is much easier said than done.
The Cougars have opened as a 3.5-point underdog in their Saturday dance with the Sun Devils.
Saturday’s matchup is essentially an elimination game within the Big 12 title race, as well as one of the most important contests in the history of either program. Not bad for two teams picked 13th and 16th in the conference preseason poll.
Oddsmakers may not have much faith in BYU, but some of the advanced metrics are currently smiling upon the Cougars. Here’s how the math projects the hunt for the Big 12 title to shake out.
ESPN Analytics uses a number of formulas — including Football Power Index (FPI), strength of record and more — to project specific outcomes for each individual college football game.
Against Arizona State, ESPN gives BYU a 44.4% chance of winning. For BYU vs. Houston, the Cougars in blue are given a 86.5% probability to defeat the visiting Cougars in red.
Should ESPN’s odds prove accurate to the final results, BYU would finish the regular season 10-2 with a 7-2 mark in Big 12 play. The Cougars would narrowly miss out on a trip to JerryWorld, with Colorado facing off with Arizona State for the conference championship instead.
According to Yahoo Sports, SP+ is defined as “a tempo-and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency, intended to be predictive and forward-facing.” Invented by ESPN’s Bill Connelly, SP+ “is not a résumé ranking, and is simply a measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”
Connelly uses SP+ to project the win probability and final score for every college football game each week. The SP+ model is 7-3 in correctly predicting BYU games this season, having picked the Cougars to lose to both SMU and Kansas State while beating Kansas.
As for this weekend, SP+ has BYU defeating Arizona State by a 27-25 final score, giving the Cougars a 56% win probability.
Winning against the Sun Devils isn’t enough to punch BYU’s ticket to the conference title game by itself, but the Cougars could automatically clinch such a berth following a victory this weekend if Iowa State loses to Utah or Colorado falls to Kansas.
According to ESPN, FPI is “a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season. FPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. Projected results are based on 20,000 simulations of the rest of the season using FPI, results to date, and the remaining schedule.”
While FPI doesn’t project individual game results, it gives BYU a 15.0% chance of winning its two remaining games. Arizona State holds a 17.9% probability, implying that the formula believes the Cougars will succumb to the Sun Devils.
But that doesn’t mean FPI is completely burying BYU. In fact, the algorithm still gives the Cougars a 26.9% chance of winning the conference championship, second in the Big 12 behind only Colorado’s 43.1%.
Even more amazingly, FPI gives BYU the highest probability within the conference to reach the College Football Playoff at 39.5%, with the Buffaloes holding a 36.9% chance.
You may be confused as to why FPI believes the Cougars are more likely than Colorado to make the playoff when the Buffaloes have a higher chance of winning the Big 12 title. Essentially, FPI’s likelihood of BYU earning an at-large playoff bid is slightly greater than that of Colorado winning the Big 12 on its own.
Personally, I’m not sure how FPI can justify the Big 12 getting two teams into the playoff at this point, but hey, I’m no math expert.