After the disappointment, worthy objectives remain for K-State.</p><p>Here&#x92;s a deal any Kansas State follower would have accepted in the preseason: A victory over Texas in the season finale to win the Big 12 championship and earn a BCS bowl.</p><p>For a program that has won precisely two conference titles in 99 years of league membership entering this season, a third would seem the ultimate goal.</p><p>That was the feeling in the aftermath of the Wildcats&#x92; crushing defeat at Baylor, a game in which a tremendous Baylor game plan on both sides and K-State injuries that have been accumulating for weeks accounted for the outcome.</p><p>As the disappointment clears, what should emerge is a Big 12 championship theme. As crazy as Saturday was with the Wildcats and Oregon, the top BCS teams, defeated, no possibility should be discounted. Remember 2007, when LSU fell to seventh in the BCS standings in the regular-season finale and played in the championship game?</p><p>Scoreboard watching is fair game, but keep in mind the primary objective in college football is to win a conference championship.</p><p>That&#x92;s not true in other sports. In the pros, it&#x92;s about enough of a finish to qualify for the playoffs. In college basketball, teams in major conferences that land in the middle of the standings are invited to the big dance.</p><p>Even the BCS, try as it does to get it right, relies on polls and computers. Alabama didn&#x92;t win the Southeastern Conference last season, but the Crimson Tide became the national champion.</p><p>A regular-season college football championship is the most deserved trophy in major sports. Only winning matters. Not committees or campaigns or wild card position.</p><p>And even more so these days in the Big 12, the best conference of no avoidance with 10 teams and nine conference games. One step on the banana peel and BCS title game hopes may be vanished as they were for Oklahoma State last season and probably now Kansas State.</p><p>But survive that league gauntlet and a champion has come by its trophy most honestly.</p><p>That hasn&#x92;t always been the case in the Big 12. In the division days, the North winner too often was mediocre, producing a championship game mismatch that nobody liked.</p><p>Other conferences now have to deal with some kind of quirks and inequities.</p><p>In the SEC, Alabama will play Georgia in the conference championship game if the Tide defeats Auburn this week. No one questions the power of either division champion. But Bama&#x92;s schedule did not include any of the top three teams in the East, the Bulldogs, Florida or South Carolina. Georgia did not face any of the West&#x92;s top three, Alabama, LSU or Texas A&M.</p><p>The Pac-12 faces a potentially bizarre situation for its championship game. UCLA clinched the South title by beating Southern California, and Stanford will win the North if it survives this weekend. The Cardinal opponent on Saturday is UCLA, and that would be the same opponent in the title game six days later.</p><p>Bob Stoops put it best. Even the greatest programs count their national championships on, at most, two hands. If you&#x92;ve been playing college football for more than a century like most have, that&#x92;s a lot of years that end in disappointment. But if the program is strong, it can contend for a conference title in many seasons.</p><p>With two losses this season, the Sooners aren&#x92;t part of the national championship picture, but because they found a way to win at West Virginia on Saturday night despite surrendering 778 total yards, Oklahoma is the only other team with one Big 12 loss.</p><p>Kansas State wins the tie-breaker because of the victory in Norman, but the Sooners are right there, and as they navigate their own tricky season-ending schedule with a home game against Oklahoma State and a trip to TCU, they&#x92;ll keep a close eye on the Kansas State-Texas clash on Dec. 1.</p><p>Two weeks out, it&#x92;s easy to think K-State/Texas won&#x92;t have the same meaning for the Wildcats now that they&#x92;re no longer first in the BCS standings. That day figured to be a wild celebration, a send-off party for the Wildcats&#x92; first shot at a national championship.</p><p>Now at the very least it will be for an accomplishment nearly as rare, a third conference championship in a century and all that comes with it, a ring, a banner, a great bowl and a place in history. The stakes seem high enough.