Who is playing in the Big 12 Championship Game?

The 2021 Big 12 Championship Game is back in AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas with kickoff set for 12:00 p.m. ET on Saturday, December 4th and airing on ABC. The division-less Big 12 conference sees whichever two teams have the overall best conference record play in this game. The Oklahoma State Cowboys are the home team as they went 8-1 in conference play and the Baylor Bears are the away team with a 7-2 conference record. Baylor gets the nod over the Oklahoma Sooners because the Bears beat them in their head-to-head matchup earlier this season.

Speaking of beating the Sooners, the Cowboys capped their regular season off with a Bedlam game that lived up to the name. Oklahoma State came away with a 37-33 win and this was first time they had won Bedlam since 2014. They enter the championship game on a five-game win streak.

The Bears wrapped up their regular season with a 27-24 win over Texas Tech. Baylor gave up a 75-yard touchdown with 6:40 left in the game, but the offense ate up enough clock and the defense forced a 53-yard field goal that Texas Tech couldn’t convert. Baylor is riding a three-game win streak heading in the Big 12 Championship game.

Baylor is likely just playing for bowl seeding, but Oklahoma State could make a case for the CFP with a win. Currently, Oklahoma is the only Big 12 team to play in a CFP game, but of the four semifinal games they played, they didn’t win any of them. If Oklahoma State wins and does crack the CFP, they could be the first Big 12 team to play in the National Championship game since Texas won the 2006 Rose Bowl over USC.