College football's most interesting lines, Week 12: Mourning the Big 12, an Army massacre, and Ohio State vs. Ohio State Lite

Breaking down Week 12's lines, where no one knows what the Big 12 is doing.

Oklahoma owes Kansas a fruit basket.

The Jayhawks washed the bitter memory of the Sooners’ aborted College Football Playoff push from the minds of fans everywhere by delivering Texas a loss that was infinitely more embarrassing. Kansas, a 20+ point underdog, went to Austin, took multiple double-digit leads, and eventually won when a walk-on playing the first offensive snap of his career plucked a two-point conversion from the sky.

It was glorious. Glorious enough to make us forget formerly 9-0 Oklahoma, by virtue of losing to Baylor, now has a transitive loss to a TCU team so frustrated by 2021 it forced the greatest coach in program history out the door. The Big 12 is currently an ouroboros of shame, a BMX wheel in which every broken spoke has briefly rotated off the ground as its rider totally shreds a local garbage dump in a fruitless effort to impress Aunt Becky. Behold, the miracle of Big 12 victory math:

Kansas > Texas > Texas Tech > West Virginia > Iowa State > Oklahoma State TCU > Baylor > Oklahoma > Kansas State > Kansas

Wonderful.

Also, bowl season kicks off this week. Catch me at the Culver’s Isthmus Bowl, taking place several miles from Madison, Wisconsin’s actual isthmus, for Wisconsin-River Falls vs. Washington University (St. Louis)! If you ever lack confidence in this life, just remember a debuting postseason game featuring the 22nd and 44th-best teams in Division III decided to kick off at the exact same time as a proper Wisconsin home game vs. a Big Ten opponent fewer than 10 miles away.

Anyway, let’s talk about the gradual fade of 2021’s college football regular season. All lines are provided by Tipico Sportsbook.