If you ask CBS Sports' Tom Fornelli, he'd tell you that the Big 12 Conference is a wide-open race, anyone's game, an arena with no clear champion.
"I am not confident Tech will win the Big 12," he shared in a recent College Football Playoff vibe check. "I have no idea who will win the Big 12. Nobody does."
"There are 16 teams in the Big 12, and nine of them are either still undefeated or have only one loss. That will change as we get deeper into conference play, but as for who will emerge, your guess is as good as mine. Just so long as we remember that that's all it is: a guess."
The point that the Big 12 has never been a predictable league is a fair one. Last year's final conference standings included a four-way tie for first place. Your monitor is not failing; you read that correctly. Iowa State and Arizona State were blessed with the opportunity to battle in Dallas for the conference championship game, while equally-impressive BYU and Colorado were relegated to a pseudo third-place contest in the Valero Alamo Bowl.
This season, chaos controls the narrative once again, despite Texas Tech's unblemished record and reputation to this point in the season. The Red Raiders have been a force in the transfer portal and have loaded their depth chart with some of the most formidable athletes from across the college football world.
Yet it's taken until week 7 for the AP Poll to finally admit Tech into the top 10, with the team still stuck behind a one-loss Alabama team. The voters may never fully shake the habit of ranking teams by reputation over resume.
BYU is the other unbeaten from the Big 12, and a team that -- despite coming off an 11-win campaign in 2024 -- still has to sweat for every ounce of national respect. They sit 18th in the AP Poll this season.
But when it comes to projecting the eventual champion, Texas Tech seems to be the conductor of the league at large, but this conference has proven year after year that nothing can be guaranteed until the final whistle has been blown on the closing weekend.
These two leaders meet in November. It could be a vastly different landscape in the league at that point.
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