The Big 12 Is Chaotic Again

The Big 12’s decision to not have a preseason poll is looking more justified by the weekend.

The conference is again in chaos as the college football world woke up on the final Sunday of October.

BYU and Cincinnati (the Bearcats!) are each 5-0 in league play, with Texas Tech and Houston (Houston!) sitting a game behind in the standings.

If the parenthesis didn’t make it obvious enough, Cincy and Houston are big surprises this high in the standings this late in the year. Both squads joined the league from the American in the 2023 season, and in 2023 and 2024, those two went a combined 9-27 in Big 12 games.

There are obviously still games to be played this year, but had there been a Big 12 preseason poll, it’s hard to imagine prognosticators would’ve had the these two teams at a combined 9-1 in conference games at this point.

When I was looking at Oklahoma State’s schedule in the preseason, my thought was that the Cowboys needed to win early because the schedule felt backloaded with the likes of Texas Tech, Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State. Well, it turns out OSU should’ve been looking out for Houston and Cincinnati.

The Cougars seemed propped up by a weak schedule when they came into the weekend at 6-1. Their best win was probably Arizona, and Texas Tech, the best team they’d played, beat them by 24.

But then Houston goes to Tempe on Saturday and beats a ranked Arizona State squad 24-16, the same Arizona State team that beat Texas Tech in that stadium just last week.

The Bearcats earned their legitimacy a little earlier in the season. It started with a close loss to Nebraska to start the year, but where their stock really took off was a 38-30 win against then-No. 14 Iowa State to make Cincy 4-1.

The Bearcats throttled Baylor 41-20 on Saturday. The Bears won their final six Big 12 games of last season. That plus Baylor returning quarterback Sawyer Robertson, the Bears were thought of pretty highly coming into the year. They could still end up being pretty good. Baylor has a chance to prove itself in games against Utah and Houston in November.

All this isn’t to say that OSU’s season would’ve been all that different with a different conference schedule, the Pokes lost to Tulsa for goodness sake. It’s just another reminder that chaos reigns supreme in the Big 12 conference.

The parity in this conference makes it fun. Texas Tech is probably the best team in the league, but the Red Raiders were proven mortal last week in Tempe (plus Tech has some injury concerns at QB). It should make for an interesting finish.