We were sleeping on the Big 12. Considering the league hands out WWE belts to its football champions, once deployed an LED basketball court for its conference tournament and is now sponsored by none other than Monster Energy, this shouldn’t have been possible.
But, there we were, snoozing past the alarm, counting our sheep in the form of Big Ten and SEC title contenders. That is, until the proverbial bucket of cold water, aka Week 7 of the college football season, was dumped on our heads.
Collectively holding the bucket were the likes of the Big 12’s ruling classes, BYU and Texas Tech, as well as the conference’s wealthy middle class, Utah and Houston.
It was BYU, albeit in controversial fashion, that scored the biggest victory of the week, toppling a hungry Notre Dame squad that had won 16 straight games by double digits, netting its highest AP Top 25 ranking since 1984 while throwing its hat in the ring as a legitimate title contender in the process.
Texas Tech scored its most convincing win yet, remaining unbeaten in conference play, Houston won a pivotal conference game against Oklahoma State and Utah held off a furious charge from an unranked Colorado program to enter the sport’s top 10.
Speaking of, as many as five Big 12 teams reside in the AP Top 25, three in the top 10. Half of the nation's remaining unbeaten teams hail from the Big 12. Not bad for a conference often thought of as the Big Ten and SEC’s little brother.
It’s a reputation rooted in history. The last national champion from the Big 12, the 2005 Texas Longhorns, no longer resides in the conference. And when the conference finally made it back to the big game, with the lovable TCU Horned Frogs in 2023, the SEC’s Georgia Bulldogs eviscerated the Big 12’s challenger 65–7 in the most lopsided title game ever.
This season, Big 12 teams are just 6–7 in nonconference play against the Power 4, which is better than the Big Ten’s 4–10 mark but pales in comparison to the SEC’s stellar 10–2 ledger. And yet, the Big 12 is, both in the last two seasons and this year, consistently in the running for the most coveted slot in the sport: a second bid to the College Football Playoff.
In each of the last two seasons, the conference had just its automatic bid in the soon-to-be-extinct 12-team playoff. If the CFP started today, the Big 12 projects to have two teams (Texas Tech and BYU) in the field.
So while the little brother reputation may be just a bit overblown, it was hard to shake the fact that the conference lacked a heavy hitter entering 2026.
Texas Tech, widely regarded as the favorite to win the conference, had major questions at quarterback in the aftermath of the Brendan Sorsby saga. BYU had the benefit of the doubt of back-to-back double-digit win seasons entering 2026, but slipups in conference play in those seasons, as well as question marks at receiver, cast some skepticism on the Cougars. Utah, while returning key Kyle Whittingham starters in the offensive backfield, had the unknowns that come with a first-year coach (Morgan Scalley), just as the transfer-laden Oklahoma State Cowboys did. Houston and the recently minted, 25th-ranked Arizona Wildcats, profiled more as sleeper teams than legitimate contenders.
But here is the Big 12, boasting three undefeated teams and as many one-loss teams in conference play, very much a factor in the CFP race. In the coming weeks, the Big 12 will begin to eat itself, just as the rest of the Power 4 does, through some big-time intraconference games, Houston-Utah in Week 8, Arizona–Texas Tech in Week 9 and the Holy War between BYU and Utah in Week 10.
Yet, the quality of these games, as well as their emerging victors, will confirm what we would have known if we weren’t in a slumber.
The Big 12 is for real.
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