The Big 12 has grown even after the departure of two national champions through westward expansion and a “prime” addition among the league’s four newcomers.
Mike Gundy is entering his 20th season as coach of 17th-ranked Oklahoma State and has been involved in every configuration of the Big 12. There was the original 12-team setup, then 10 teams with round-robin schedules, before 14 last year and now 16 with new additions from the fragmented Pac-12. At the same time, Red River rivals Oklahoma and Texas moved to the SEC.
“As we move forward, there’s going to be a lot of equality. I would say more equality in college football than there has been in recent years,” said Gundy, whose Cowboys finished second in the Big 12 last season. “I think we have a number of teams in this league that have a chance to rise to the national level. Whether anyone can take the lead and dominate for an extended period of time is hard to say at this point.”
Texas, the fourth-seeded national champion in 2005, is out after winning every Big 12 title in the inaugural 1996 season and reaching the College Football Playoff last year as fourth. Only 16th-seeded Oklahoma has more titles, winning the league in 14 of the 28 seasons.
Freshman Utah, whose coach Kyle Whittingham is also in his 20th season, is the league’s top-ranked team in the Associated Press Top 25 preseason poll. The Utes’ No. 12-ranked quarterback Cam Rising returns, a seventh-year senior who sat out last season with a knee injury.
This is Whittingham’s fourth league with the Utes. He was an assistant during their WAC days and has coached in the Mountain West, Pac-12 and Big 12.
“We’ve made this transition before, although when we moved to the Pac-12 we were a G5 school trying to move up a level and there was a little curve we had to get through,” he said. “We feel like we have a good roster now, 1-85, and we’re ready to compete in this league.”
Colorado, the original member of the Big 12, returns after 13 seasons in the Pac-12 in which it recorded just two wins. The Buffaloes enter their second season with Deion Sanders as coach. They have lost eight of their last nine games after a 3-0 start for Coach Prime, who reloaded through the portal again this season.
Rounding off the league
No. 18 Kansas State, No. 22 Kansas, Baylor, Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech have been part of the Big 12 throughout its history. TCU and West Virginia joined in 2012, after a two-year hiatus in which the league lost Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas A&M.
No. 21 Arizona and Arizona State joined Colorado and Utah from the Pac-12.
BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF all had negative records in their Big 12 debuts last season, going 8-28 overall in the conference, with only four of those wins coming against teams outside that quartet.
OLLIE AND OTHER RUNNERS
All-America running back Ollie Gordon II, who led the nation with 1,732 rushing yards and 21 touchdowns for Oklahoma State last season, is one of six 1,000-yard rushers in the Big 12.
Texas Tech’s Tahj Brooks ranked fourth nationally with 1,538 yards and UCF’s RJ Harvey ranked sixth with 1,416 yards. The other returning 1,000-yard runners are Kansas’ Devin Neal (1,280 yards, 16 TDs), Kansas State’s DJ Giddens (1,226 yards) and Cincinnati’s Corey Kiner (1,047 yards).
NEW BIG 12 QBS
Shedeur Sanders went to Colorado with his father from Jackson State and threw for 3,230 yards with 27 touchdowns and three interceptions. Noah Fifita, a third-year sophomore at Arizona, set a school record by completing 72.4% of his passes for 2,869 yards and 25 TDs.
Rising is back in the Big 12, where he redshirted as a freshman at Texas in 2018 before transferring to Utah.
UCF’s KJ Jefferson and Baylor’s Dequan Finn are dual-threat QBs who moved to the Big 12 after five seasons elsewhere. Jefferson threw for 7,911 yards and 67 TDs and ran for 1,876 yards and 21 TDs in 44 games for Arkansas. Finn accounted for 8,914 yards (7,074 passes/1,840 carries) and 88 points (63 passes/25 carries) in Toledo.
NOTABLE GAMES
Arizona plays its first Big 12 game on Friday, Sept. 13, at Kansas State. Utah’s conference opener — after an earlier game against Baylor that does not count toward the standings — is Sept. 21 at Oklahoma State.
The Sunflower State matchup on Oct. 26 could pit top quarterbacks Jalon Daniels for Kansas and Avery Johnson for K-State against each other. BYU is at Utah on Nov. 9, the first time their Holy War is a conference game since the Mountain West days of 2010, before BYU became an independent for 12 seasons.
BIG 12 FOOTBALL CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
