The Big 12 Championship picture will clear up after this weekend
There are five teams tied atop the Big 12 with 4-1 records in conference play: Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, and Iowa State. Four of those teams will play each other this weekend, while Iowa State will play the No. 6 team in the league on a Saturday that will clarify who the Big 12 Championship contenders really are.
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Both Texas and Kansas State are 4-1 in conference play, with the Longhorns 7-1 overall and Kansas State 6-2. Those two teams will meet in Austin, Texas on Saturday at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. The Longhorns are in search of their first Big 12 title since 2009 and first conference championship game appearance since 2018. Since 2009, K-State has won the Big 12 twice with their most recent coming last year. Texas has won six straight contests versus the Wildcats
Meanwhile in Stillwater, Okla., the Oklahoma Sooners enter Boone Pickens Stadium for the Bedlam game with the Oklahoma State Cowboys. Mike Gundy‘s team started the season 2-2 with an atrocious 33-7 loss to South Alabama and a one-score defeat at Iowa State, but has since rattled off four straight wins over Kansas State, Kansas, West Virginia, and Cincinnati. This battle between 4-1 teams has more implications than just this year’s Big 12 title race, as the two longtime rivals are not slated to play again once Oklahoma heads east for the SEC.
Speaking of Iowa State, the Cyclones are 4-1 in league play despite not having the services of Hunter Dekkers, who started every game at quarterback for ISU last season. Rocco Becht has performed admirably in his place, and the Iowa State defense has been its typical strong self with Big 12 wins over Oklahoma State, TCU, Cincinnati, and Baylor. The lone setback for Matt Campbell‘s program came versus Oklahoma.
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Iowa State hosts Kansas, who sits in sixth place in the Big 12. The Jayhawks had a role in causing all this chaos, issuing OU its first loss of the season last week in Lawrence, Kan. and creating the five-team logjam at the top of the league.
In the 10-team iteration of the Big 12 that saw everyone play each other in a round robin format, having two or fewer losses in conference play almost guaranteed a spot in the Big 12 Championship in Arlington. In the current 14-team version where not everybody plays each other (Texas misses Oklahoma State, West Virginia, Cincinnati, and Central Florida this year, for example), scenarios exist where multiple teams complete the year with one or fewer conference losses, something that has only happened three times since the completion of the 2011 season.
After this weekend, there could still be as many as three teams with one conference loss. The Big 12 title picture won’t be fully clear until the top two teams meet on the field in AT&T Stadium in December, but the first weekend of November will go a long way toward revealing the remaining contenders as the season enters the final stretch.
Here are the final four games for each 4-1 contender.
Texas
- 11/4 – Kansas State
- 11/11 – at TCU
- 11/18 – at Iowa State
- 11/24 – Texas Tech
Oklahoma
- 11/4 – at Oklahoma State
- 11/11 – West Virginia
- 11/18 – at BYU
- 11/24 – TCU
Oklahoma State
- 11/4 – Oklahoma
- 11/11 – at UCF
- 11/18 – at Houston
- 11/25 – BYU
Kansas State
- 11/4 – at Texas
- 11/11 – Baylor
- 11/18 – at Kansas
- 11/25 – Iowa State
Iowa State
- 11/4 – Kansas
- 11/11 – at BYU
- 11/18 – Texas
- 11/25 – at Kansas State
