By Mark Pszonak
If you enjoy college football chaos, then you need to become more familiar with the new Big 12. In its first season after the departure of Texas and Oklahoma and the arrival of half the PAC-12, the conference has already been exciting, confusing and impossible to predict. And it’s only early October.
Preseason polls had Utah as the favorite, while Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Kansas and Arizona also received first place votes. Now all five already have a conference loss and together they combine for a 3-9 conference record.
Currently leading the way in the conference are Texas Tech, BYU, Colorado, Iowa State and West Virginia, which in the preseason poll were projected to finish 9th, 13th, 11th, 6th and 7th. In other words, the Big 12 media representatives didn’t do a very good job.
Don’t be too harsh on them though, as only a prolific liar would tell you that they knew that Kansas was going to be 1-5 overall and 0-3 in the conference while Texas Tech was going to be 5-1 overall and 3-0 in the conference.
So, who is still a major player to win the conference? Texas Tech, BYU, Colorado, Iowa State and West Virginia have positioned themselves nicely, but several others are still lurking. Kansas State, Arizona and Utah were preseason favorites, and while they all suffered an early conference loss, each is capable of regrouping and finding their way back to the top. I’ll also add Arizona State to this list, as the preseason pick to finish in last, is currently 1-1 in the Big 12 and 4-1 overall.
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With 9 of the 16 teams in the conference still having a legitimate argument to win the Big 12, it makes almost every game important through October and likely most of November. This is what this conference needed to help re-establish itself on the national stage.
And I’m excited to watch it all unfold.
