The Big 12 is in its 30th football season, 20 years after last winning a national championship and now in a much different era of the game than when the conference started.
Like many 30-year-olds, the league has gotten bigger while going through plenty of ups and downs. There have already been some this season.
TCU provided a much better finish to the Big 12's holiday weekend than how it began. The Horned Frogs won 48-14 at North Carolina to spoil Bill Belichick's debut in a prime-time Labor Day game
highly anticipated because of the 73-year-old coach who won six Super Bowl titles before his first college game.
“Obviously, he has been a great NFL coach, props to him," TCU quarterback Josh Hoover said. “But I’m just out here playing football and doing my job playing against North Carolina.”
While most talk nationally will still be about Belichick's loss, it was a boost for the Big 12 after losses in its first three games this season against teams from other Power Four leagues: Cincinnati at Nebraska, and Colorado (to Georgia Tech) and Baylor (to Auburn) at home.
No. 25 Utah won 43-10 at UCLA 43-10 late Saturday. But Kansas State that same day, a week after a 24-21 loss to Iowa State in Dublin, Ireland, needed a last-minute touchdown to beat FCS team North Dakota.
Five different schools have been Big 12 champions the past five seasons. Arizona State made the new 12-team College Football Playoff last year after being the preseason pick to finish last in its league debut.
All the other power conferences, even the now-rebuilding Pac-12, had multiple champions in that same period. The SEC (Alabama), Big Ten (Michigan) and ACC (Clemson) have all had three-time champs in the 2020s.
“What pro sports leagues strive for is competitive balance and competitiveness from one through 16, or however deep the league is. And that’s what we’ve been striving for and pointing out,” Scott Draper, the Big 12's chief football and competition officer, said this week. “Getting a chance to play for a national championship, no matter if you’re at one team or another team, the opportunity is the same. So that’s what we think is a winning formula.”
No. 16 Iowa State, No. 24 Texas Tech, newly ranked Utah and TCU are among the top contenders for the Big 12 title. So are Arizona State and Baylor, which had won six regular-season games in a row before losing to Auburn. The Bears' league title in 2021 ended Oklahoma's record run of six consecutive championships, followed by Kansas State, Texas and the Sun Devils.
The Big 12's three national championships came from undefeated teams in the conference's first 10 seasons: Nebraska in 1997, Oklahoma in 2000 and Texas in 2005. All now play in different leagues.
Nebraska left in 2011, part of a tumultuous period in the Big 12's teen years. The Huskers went to the Big Ten at the same time Colorado left for the Pac-12 in the first changes to the original 12-team configuration that has since had seasons with 10, 14 and now 16 teams.
Texas A&M and Missouri departed for the SEC in 2012, when TCU and West Virginia entered the Big 12. Longtime independent BYU joined with American Athletic Conference teams Houston, Cincinnati and UCF a 14-team setup in 2023, a year before Texas and Oklahoma made their planned move to the SEC while Colorado returned from the dismantling Pac-12 along with Arizona, Arizona State and Utah.
TCU in 2022, its first season with coach Sonny Dykes, was the only Big 12 team to make a national championship game appearance in the 10 seasons of the four-team playoff (2014-23).
Oklahoma won 14 Big 12 titles in its 28 seasons. Texas has the second-most with four, though spread out and with a pair of bookend titles in the league's inaugural 1996 season and the Longhorns' final season in 2023.
Fourth-year commissioner Brett Yormark believes parity matters, but also thinks having some constant contenders and champions could be good for the Big 12.
“I think ultimately over time, and it’s hopefully sooner than later, there’ll be a couple of our schools that will emerge. Elite schools that are always part of the conversations at the highest levels, that’s what we’re working towards," Yormark said during Big 12 media days this summer. "But it starts with parity and being competitive top to bottom. And I think we’re there, and I think we’re the best in the country when you think about how deep we are top to bottom. But I do believe that long term you need certain schools to emerge to the top.”
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