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The difference between a playoff spot and a Sugar Bowl appearance for Oklahoma State might come down to a mistake.

Two mistakes, actually.

The 30-27 loss to Central Michigan on a Hail Mary lateral in Week 2 was stunning and technically shouldn't have happened. However, its national implications weren't seriously considered at the time.

Consider that dramatically changed.

The Cowboys' 31-6 win over TCU moves Mike Gundy's team to 9-2 and makes the Bedlam game against Oklahoma the decider of the Big 12 championship regardless of what happens between the Sooners and West Virginia in Week 12. Had it not been for the loss to Central Michigan, Oklahoma State would be thinking about more than a conference title.

You know the play by now. It was only one of the most incredible of its kind in 2016. Quarterback Mason Rudolph threw the ball away on a 4th-and-13 as time expired, but was flagged for intentional grounding. That gave Central Michigan one untimed down to run a play at the end of the game.

Except the Chippewas shouldn't have been granted that extra play. The MAC officiating crew misapplied an NCAA rule and Big 12 replay officials failed to correct the call on the field.

You know what happened next...

Because of the botched calls, Oklahoma State is nowhere near the playoff conversation even though it ranked just outside the top 10 last Tuesday when the playoff selection committee unveiled its latest rankings.

The term "screwed" gets thrown around way too liberally, but Oklahoma State will be screwed in the worst way if it beats Oklahoma.

Granted, some context should be considered. Oklahoma State should never have been in that position. It should have knocked the Hail Mary down to the turf. It should have stopped Corey Willis from taking a lateral and crossing the field for the winning score.

But it didn't. All anyone could chalk it up to was #MACtion because college football is weird and unexplainable more times than it is not. Even the best coaches can't always get 18-to-22-year-old players to execute consistently.

And so the loss counted. It shouldn't have, but it did. That's football, and like all sports, it is subject to a degree of human error. The calls even out most of the time. It didn't in this case, and because it was the last play of the game, the mistake was magnified.

"In our program, we talk all the time about controlling the things we can control and not getting caught up in the things we can't control," Gundy said in a statement. "We can control how we focus on and prepare for Pittsburgh. We can't control the decisions that were made Saturday, so I do not believe it benefits our coaches or players to dwell on them and re-hash them beyond what we already did during post-game interviews..."

Still, it's a shame that is what's keeping Oklahoma State out of the playoff hunt.

Are the Pokes actually one of the four best teams in college football? Maybe ... maybe not ... but there are a handful of teams in the playoff conversation that probably aren't, either.

Let's consider, too, what Oklahoma State has done since losing to Central Michigan. It has won eight of its last nine games, the only loss being on the road to Baylor before the the suction of adversity engulfed the Bears into a black hole. One of those wins is against West Virginia, a top-10-ish team with real-life playoff aspirations. (They're far-fetched, to be sure, but they exist.)

Gundy also has his team playing complete, high-level football. Specifically, two things have stood out:

First, creating takeaways, even of the right place, right time variety, has been an understated part of this program's success over the last few years. In the Big 12 where defensive stats are graded on a curve, winning categories like that are critical. In 2011, the last time Oklahoma State won the Big 12, Gundy's team led the Big 12 with 44 turnovers gained. That was 15 more than the next team (Baylor). Three years ago, a 10-win season, the Pokes again led the conference takeaways.

This year? You guessed it.

But Oklahoma State's ability to run the ball consistently -- with actual running backs instead of 1B quarterback option J.W. Walsh -- has been the real difference between this year's team and the ones from the past couple of years. Against Pittsburgh in September, Rennie Childs ran for 101 yards, something Oklahoma State backs haven't done consistently in some time. Since then, the Pokes have had five games in which a back ran for at least 100 yards. Against TCU, Oklahoma State rushed for 334 yards while Justice Hill and Carson eclipsed 100 yards each.

All of this is to say Oklahoma State has been playing some grown-up man ball in a conference labeled for its finesse. It's led by a guy who gets way more credit for a mullet than he does as a coach. Say that about any team with nine or 10 wins and they're probably in the playoff discussion.

Perhaps faced with an unforeseen decision, the committee might consider the Cowboys over the next couple of weeks in a way that's not so easily dismissed. Because the outcome of the Central Michigan game can no longer be dismissed.

That doesn't mean Oklahoma State is playoff-worthy. All of this will be moot anyway if Oklahoma State loses Bedlam, and the Big 12 has dim playoff hopes as it stands anyway.

But it's no secret the committee has been gifted with cut-and-dry choices in its first two years. In no way has it been challenged. This year might be different if the landscape puts Penn State in the Big Ten championship over Ohio State or Washington State in the Pac-12 title over Washington.

In the spirit of that discussion, the biggest precedence of all would be at least considering the lost team from a lost game.