What it took to get in
Nine conference games decide two championship-game seats. The obvious question is what record is enough, and the honest answer is that a record is not what decides it.
| Season | Championship game | Best team that missed | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 |  TCU 7‑2 |  Oklahoma 8‑1 |  Oklahoma State 6‑3 | |
| 2018 |  Texas 7‑2 | Oklahoma 8‑1 |  West Virginia 6‑3 | |
| 2019 |  Baylor 8‑1 | Oklahoma 8‑1 | Texas 5‑4 | |
| 2021 | Baylor 7‑2 | Oklahoma State 8‑1 | Oklahoma 7‑2 | same record |
| 2022 |  Kansas State 7‑2 | TCU 9‑0 | Texas 6‑3 | |
| 2023 | Oklahoma State 7‑2 | Texas 8‑1 | Oklahoma 7‑2 | same record |
| 2024 |  Iowa State 7‑2 |  Arizona State 7‑2 |  Colorado 7‑2 | same record — 4 tied there |
| 2025 |  BYU 8‑1 |  Texas Tech 8‑1 |  Utah 7‑2 | |
3 of these seasons sent a team to the title game while another team on the identical conference record stayed home. In 2024 four teams finished 7‑2 and the ladder chose two of them. That is the whole reason the seven steps exist: by the time the records are level, the standings have stopped being the answer.
2020 is not in this table. COVID left teams on eight, nine and ten conference games in the same standings, so nothing that season can be compared to another one — it is excluded from every analysis on this site rather than shown with a caveat.
Two formats sit in this table. Through 2016 this was a ten‑team round robin — nine games meant everyone played everyone, and the record was a complete account. From 2024 it is sixteen teams playing nine of a possible fifteen, so the same 9‑game denominator now describes two teams who did not face the same league.