DALLAS -- If Baylor is undefeated come Dec. 6, Art Briles believes there is no doubt his team will be in the College Football Playoff.
"If we line up and we win 12 games this year, we're going to be in the final four," said Briles, whose team finishes its regular season with a Dec. 5 matchup against Texas. "I think you can put that in ink right now, because we will have beaten many ranked teams in this conference, and last year we beat more top 10 teams than anybody in America."
In fact, Briles continues to believe winning is the way to solve Baylor's non-conference scheduling problem.
Schedules that were made years ago have come back to haunt Briles' program. Taking shots at the Bears' non-conference slate has become an offseason pastime after the College Football Playoff committee highlighted the importance of quality wins and scheduling when Baylor was left out of the playoff in 2014. Baylor's 2015 schedule features non-conference games against SMU, Lamar and Rice.
"My job is to win," Briles said. "Truth be known, I think, if we'd have gone 12‑0 (last year), there's no doubt we're in there and we're rolling. So that's something, if we win all our games, it takes care of itself."
That said, Baylor is taking steps to try to juice up its non-conference opponents in the future with Duke (2017, 2018) and Utah (2023, 2024) as future Power 5 opponents. Even though winning could cure all ills, Baylor has lost ground in the perception battle as other schools in the conference take on Notre Dame (Texas), Minnesota (TCU), Arkansas (Texas Tech) and Tennessee (Oklahoma) in non-conference play this season.
"These things are made years in advance," Briles said. "We're actually working on our schedule to maybe make it look better to the public and help us, if it does come down to that, but I've never met a good loss or met a bad win."