College football crossed the offseason Rubicon over the weekend as we’re now closer to kickoff in Week Zero than we are removed from the national title game. As we hit the downslope barreling toward the upcoming 2025 season—and with most of the transfer portal activity quieted down—it’s time to check in with the major conferences to see just how they’re shaping up coming out of the spring.
You can find the ACC edition here. Next up? The Big 12.
In a league that can technically play games across all four time zones on a Saturday, the Big 12 is the living, breathing definition of chaos ball where any result can surface from a noon kickoff until deep into the night out west. Truly every game can be distilled down to a coin flip, and there’s not much that separates the top from the bottom in a conference that makes the NFL blush with the amount of parity on hand.
FanDuel lists every Big 12 team win total as between 5.5 and 8.5 on the season, which speaks to how closely bunched each of these programs are and lends credence to simply picking names out of a hat (or finding a quarterback you like) when it comes to sorting out a potential order of programs in 2025. There’s no truly elite squad that can be viewed as a preseason national title contender, but there is a deep bench of teams from one to 16 that should make the Big 12 a regular destination for viewing wild and unpredictable games each weekend this season.
Title favorite: Arizona State Sun Devils
The reigning Big 12 champion can very well be installed as the team to beat by default, though as last year’s run from No. 16 in the conference preseason media poll to eventual College Football Playoff quarterfinalist indicated, go ahead and pick the favorite at your own peril.
Still, there’s plenty to get on board with, including that young head coach Kenny Dillingham pushed all the right buttons last season and retains the bulk of his staff and roster (No. 2 in FBS in returning production, according to ESPN) from an 11–3 run that could do even more in this prime window for contention. QB Sam Leavitt is in line to be one of the best signal-callers west of the Mississippi and should benefit from dynamic wideout Jordyn Tyson’s return to health after he missed the postseason run in 2024.
If the defense can take another step, there’s no reason to think they’ll be right back in Arlington, Texas, again despite a tricky schedule that sees ASU travel to fellow Big 12 contenders like the Baylor Bears, Utah Utes and Iowa State Cyclones.
Conference tiers
Dark horses: Baylor Bears, BYU Cougars, Iowa State Cyclones, Kansas State Wildcats, Texas Tech Red Raiders
Aiming high: Kansas Jayhawks, TCU Horned Frogs, Utah Utes
Battling for a bowl: Arizona Wildcats, UCF Knights, Cincinnati Bearcats, Colorado Buffaloes, Houston Cougars, Oklahoma State Cowboys
Building for next year: West Virginia Mountaineers
You could easily make a case for pretty much every team in the Big 12 to catch the right bounces, make the conference title game and go onto the College Football Playoff. You could just as easily make the same argument that there are enough flaws in each program that simply making a bowl game will be a real fight between roster flaws and a difficult slate on the docket.
Still, there appears to be a group of six realistic teams hoping to win the league, three others in Kansas, TCU and Utah who have enough to be in the same category and the rest of the Big 12 which will be intent on being a difficult out for all involved.
The bottom line is that there will be no major conference in the country that will need to drill down on potential tiebreaking scenarios in the month of November as much as the Big 12 will for the second straight year.
Top storyline: Coach Prime’s third act
The most interesting person in college football remains Colorado head coach Deion Sanders and all eyes will be on Boulder, Colo., once again to see just how he navigates a third act on the headset without his son at quarterback and a do-everything two-way star leading the way.
There’s a lot of optimism about landing a star freshman at quarterback in Julian Lewis, but until Prime can get him ready, Liberty Flames transfer Kaidon Salter gives the team real upside that could help carry an offense that could be more consistent than a year ago. The defense could be one of the more salty units in the Big 12 given who returns and how well coordinator Robert Livingston performed last season, but there is no shortage of question marks still to be sorted out.
The schedule doesn’t do the Buffs any favors with a tricky Friday opener against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets at Folsom Field and a brutal run of BYU, at TCU, Iowa State and at Utah in the middle of the season (they also end the season with two of the favorites, ASU and at K-State). It could all go swimmingly or it could be a disappointment akin to Sanders’s first season in charge. Either way, it will certainly be a must-watch for far more than just the on-field product.
Under-the-radar storyline: Texas Tech ponies up
Though nobody will likely ever know the true numbers spent on any given roster in college football, it’s very likely that some of the most expensive teams assembled in the early NIL era will reside in the great state of Texas this season. That is particularly true of the Red Raiders, who were among the biggest spenders in the transfer portal in 2025 as they look to supplement a roster that is also top 10 in the country in terms of returning production. There’s a lot of pressure riding on coach Joey McGuire to make it all work, but it won’t be for lack of talent with a group that has pretty loudly shouted that the program is going all-in on contending this season.
Notable players arriving
Transfers: Texas Tech edge David Bailey (Stanford Cardinal), Texas Tech OT Howard Sampson (North Carolina Tar Heels), Texas Tech edge Romello Height (Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets), Iowa State WR Chase Sowell (East Carolina Pirates), TCU WR Jordan Dwyer (Vanderbilt Commodores)
Freshmen: Kansas State TE Linkon Cure, Colorado QB Julian Lewis, TCU edge Chad Woodfork, Colorado OT Carde Smith
Notable departures
Draft: Colorado WR/DB Travis Hunter, Arizona WR Tetairoa McMillan, TCU WR Jack Bech, Arizona State RB Cam Skattebo, Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders, Oklahoma State RB Ollie Gordon II
Transfers: Florida State DB Jeremiah Wilson (Houston), Miami Hurricanes WR Keelan Marion (BYU), Washington Huskies WR Tacario Davis (Arizona), Washington OL Carver Willis (Kansas State), Alabama Crimson Tide LB Nikhai Hill-Green (Colorado)
New coaches
What’s old is new again for two programs bringing in coaches who will not need directions to the football facility.
By far the most interesting revival is that of Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia. Some may have memory-holed his cantankerous departure from Morgantown, W.Va., back in 2007, but it’s worth remembering that there was a lot said between the Mountaineers, the fan base and their native son-turned-coach at the time. Such feelings have apparently healed over the subsequent two decades because now RichRod is back and hoping to make the program a more regular participant in the national conversation than they have been since he left for the Michigan Wolverines.
While he lasted only three seasons in the Big Ten and didn’t have a winning conference record at Arizona, it’s clear he can still coach after going 27–10 with the Jacksonville State Gamecocks—leading them to the CUSA title just a season after transitioning from FCS. He’ll have the runway to build up his program in the short term but, at least for now, the vibes are all positive at WVU as there’s a real “getting the band back together” movement going on.
Likewise, UCF went back to a familiar name in its recent coaching search as Scott Frost returns from a disappointing tenure at his alma mater and nearly three years in the wilderness. While he authored one of the great turnarounds of all time during his first stint in Orlando, the job he comes back to is a much different one between being in a power conference, a slew of facility changes on campus and a far more competitive league. Considering one-score losses were a worrying trend across five years with the Nebraska Cornhuskers, it will be interesting to see if Frost can balance rekindling old magic with the Knights and making on-field progress the school believes it should be seeing.
Coaches on the hot seat
One of the Big 12’s smallest towns will have one of the hottest seats in the country this season as Mike Gundy’s tenure could well be winding down at his alma mater. The second-longest tenured head coach in FBS has largely outperformed his available resources and general expectations, but last year’s 3–9 campaign (including 0–9 in conference play) despite returning nearly every starter was just the opening Oklahoma State needed to restructure Gundy’s contract and, notably, make his buyout far more palatable. The former Cowboys quarterback has been openly questioning university brass in recent years and generating off-field headlines hasn’t exactly endeared him to some in orange and black.
Gundy has typically surprised with double-digit win seasons (like in 2021 and ’23) when less is expected of his team and he’ll have to hope that will be the case once again. If not, things could get messy quickly in Stillwater, Okla., and bringing in Doug Meacham and Todd Grantham as new coordinators are not exactly confidence-inspiring moves for somebody who has quickly found himself backed into a coaching corner.
Elsewhere, Dave Aranda enters 2025 with a 31–30 mark at Baylor and may still have some lingering hot seat chatter if this season proves to be a disappointing one. A large buyout brought him back last year and a six-game winning streak would suggest things are back on track in Waco, Texas, but the Bears need to really contend to quiet things down further.
In a far more perilous position might be Scott Satterfield, who has struggled since hitting the eject button from the Louisville Cardinals to reset at Cincinnati. The Bearcats are just 4–14 in league play and seem like a shell of a program from the one that made the CFP just four years ago. He’s got a decent-sized buyout and an administration that would very much like the tenure to work out, but if there’s not a big improvement in 2025, a change may very well be in the cards.
Elsewhere around the Big 12, it’s worth monitoring Sonny Dykes at TCU and Brent Brennan at Arizona. Neither fan base seem overly thrilled at recent results, and both coaches are now working for athletic directors who didn’t hire them. Buyouts are tangible enough that it’s more of a 2026 conversation, but severely underperforming this season could make things much hotter than one would expect in a vacuum. Tech’s McGuire may be in a similar position if he has disappointing results with a very expensive roster and one of the nicest football facilities in the country that just opened up.
Finally, there’s the question of when will Kyle Whittingham retire? He already has a designated successor in defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley but returned for 2025 and will turn 66 this season. The recent 5–7 record in the Utes’ first season in the league was out of character, but there’s nothing to suggest they can’t get back into CFP contention and allow Whittingham to ride out on a high note in Salt Lake City.
The final word
Parity, thy name is the Big 12.
From top to bottom, it will be hard to find another conference that can truly say any team can beat any other, but that will be the case this season as every Saturday will largely turn into a series of random coin flips that will only further muddle who is good in the Big 12 and who is just lucky. That’s great for entertainment, especially among neutrals, but will probably be another reason why the league will send only one program into the CFP again this season.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Big 12 Football Primer: Parity Reigns Supreme With No Truly Elite Squad.