University of Colorado Athletics

ROCK PIECE — The tiebreakers weren’t in Colorado’s favor on Saturday, as all three teams tied for wins with the Buffaloes atop the Big 12 standings and left CU on the outside looking in for next weekend’s Big 12 championship game.

Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders’ Buffs (9-3 overall, 7-2 Big 12) finished last regular season in a four-way tie for the lead with Arizona State, Iowa State and BYU.

Arizona State and Iowa State finished ahead in the tiebreaker and will play for the championship on Saturday in Arlington, Texas.

Still, CU’s conference finish is its best non-divisional finish since CU and Nebraska shared the Big 8 title in 1991.

The Buffs’ hopes were alive until the final game of the evening. But they needed Houston to upset BYU to advance to the championship game, and BYU won 30-18.

Now the Buffs await a bowling bid, with the matchups set to be announced next Sunday.

This year’s bowl pairings will have a slight wrinkle. All former Pac-12 teams now in the ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten retain their former bowl affiliations. These Pac-12 bowls include the DIRECTV Holiday Bowl, Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl, SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl, LA Bowl Hosted By Gronk, Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl and Valero Alamo Bowl.

Of this group, the Alamo Bowl has the first pick from the Big 12 and Pac-12 pool, followed by the Holiday, Las Vegas, Sun, LA and Independence bowls.

While there is no guarantee as to where the Buffs will end up, there is no doubt that Coach Prime and the Buffs will be a highly sought after selection. CU has been one of the most-watched teams in the country week after week and has two of the country’s biggest stars as favorites for the Heisman Trophy Travis Hunter and quarterback Shedeur Sanders.

Bowl committees will obviously be eager to add that star power and the national spotlight that comes with it to their matches.

A bowl victory would give Colorado 10 wins, something the program has accomplished only twice since 1996 (10-3 in 2001 and 10-4 in 2016). It has been 20 years since the Buffs have won a bowl game, as they have lost their last four bowl appearances (2005, 2007, 2016 and 2020). Their last bowl victory came in 2004, when Gary Barnett’s Colorado team defeated UTEP 33-28 in the Houston Bowl.