Could OSU be Orlando-bound for bowl season?
STILLWATER — With the Oklahoma State football world still wobbling from Saturday’s loss at the hands of a Kansas State team that was a three-touchdown underdog, OSU fans are looking for some stability.
A visit from Kansas next Saturday might be the pill they need, but until then, let’s address some questions that arose from Saturday’s perplexing defeat:
What does the loss to Kansas State do to OSU’s bowl outlook?
For now, it would appear the Cowboys are charted on a course for the Camping World Bowl in Orlando, Florida. The middle tier of the three Orlando bowl games, the Camping World Bowl gets the best available ACC team after the Orange Bowl selection is made.
A couple of online bowl projections have teams such as Virginia Tech or North Carolina State lined up for a trip to the Camping World Bowl.
Some projections still suggest OSU could land back at the Alamo Bowl, but the Cowboys have some other story lines working against them. TCU might not get into a New Year’s Six bowl. Or the folks in San Antonio might choose to go with the fresh face of this year’s Big 12 darling, Iowa State, which travels well to bowl games after an average season — much less a year like it has had.
Either of those would likely leave OSU in line for a trip to Orlando.
Did an additional day provide any clarity to what went wrong against K-State?
Not even a little bit. It’s still as hard to explain as it was on Saturday night.
Maybe coach Mike Gundy will offer a fresh perspective at his Monday news conference, but
it’s hard to envision anything revealing itself as the obvious source of the Cowboys’ demise.
Multiple players said they felt like the team just came out flat from the start. Gundy didn’t sense an absence of energy on the sideline.
The defense didn’t settle in until Kansas State stopped trying to pass. The offense didn’t find its footing until it was in an Abe Lincoln hole — four scores.
If not for Byron Pringle’s kickoff return TD, the special teams units would’ve had their best day in a while. But that TD was a major turning point in the game.
So the answers of the K-State debacle likely won’t be narrowed down. Everybody contributed.
Where does this season rate on the disappointment scale?
OSU fans who don’t say it rates high are probably the ones who toss out the “same ol’ thing” line to describe the season’s fateful fall.
But this season was different. Expectations of perhaps the greatest season in school history were real, and the possibility of a College Football Playoff bid were legitimate.
The schedule seemed to be set up perfectly, with most of the teams viewed at the beginning of the season as the toughest opponents — TCU, Oklahoma and Kansas State — all coming to Stillwater.
Yet that became the team’s downfall, failing to win meaningful games at home. The oddity of a team that goes unbeaten on the road and is hoping to get to .500 at home is startling.
So the disappointment matches the size of the fall.