The Oklahoma State Cowboys are getting used to now know when they’ll be playing until less than a week before the game.

The Texas Tech Red Raiders are set to visit the Cowboys on Nov. 14 in Oklahoma State’s next-to-last home game of the 2026 season. On Monday, the Big 12 announced that their game, along with the rest of the league’s games, will be on a six-day hold. We won’t know when the Red Raiders (7-1, 4-1 in Big 12) and the Cowboys (5-3, 3-2) will play until the final game ends on Saturday.

It will be a late wait, too. Tech plays the final game on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. central time as it hosts West Virginia.

Big 12 Schedule for Week 11

Friday, Nov. 13

Houston at Colorado, 9:15 p.m., ESPN

Saturday, Nov. 14

Texas Tech at Iowa State, TBA

Cincinnati at Iowa State, TBA

Kansas State at TCU, TBA

Kansas at West Virginia, TBA

Baylor at BYU, TBA

Arizona State at UCF, TBA

Utah at Arizona, TBA

The Cowboys are coming off a 51-49 loss to Iowa State on Saturday, a game where Oklahoma State’s defense struggled throughout the contest and let a victory slip away in the final seconds on a game-winning field goal by the Cyclones.

The loss puts the Cowboys in a four-way tie for third place in the Big 12 with Arizona, Houston and Baylor. All four teams need some significant chaos — plus wins in their remaining four games — to have a shot at reaching the Big 12 Championship game. The top two teams in the league qualify for the game.

Utah is the conference's only undefeated team and leads the pack at 5-0 with four league games remaining. The Utes face BYU on Saturday, which only has one loss. Even if the Cougars beat the Utes, it would only result in a tie for first place, and both teams would still have a pathway to the Big 12 title game.

Texas Tech is tied with BYU with just one league loss after it lost to Cincinnati two weeks ago. The Red Raiders don't have as clean a pathway to the game as BYU or Utah because the Red Raiders won't play either the Utes or the Cougars. But at least they're on better footing than the teams tied with two losses.

For the Cowboys, any pathway to the title game begins with Utah losing two games and both BYU and Texas Tech each losing at least one more game. That tech loss needs to come against Oklahoma State so the Cowboys can collect a valuable tiebreaker. Oklahoma State would likely need Houston to lose another game in this scenario since it lost to the Cougars.

Too many things need to happen to consider the Cowboys’ path to a title game realistic anymore.