One of college football’s greatest treasures — one that many casual observers might miss — is the road to Arlington, that is, the Big 12 Championship race.
The Big Ten and SEC are undoubtedly entertaining enough, and, likely, the last team standing in the College Football Playoff will be a team from one of those two conferences — but their journey through conference play will have been littered with blowouts because those teams were head and shoulder better than everyone else in the league.
That’s why the teams expected to win those leagues in the preseason are right on track to do so.
Georgia and Texas were first and second in the SEC Preseason Poll — they’re first and second in odds to win the SEC heading into November.
Ohio State and Oregon were first and second in the Big Ten preseason poll. The Buckeyes and Ducks are still the top two teams in Big Ten odds after Week 9.
The Big 12 standings, however, are almost a complete inverse of what the preseason poll looked like back in July. Take a look at the 2024 Big 12 Football Media Preseason Poll.
Big 12 Football Preseason Poll (2024)
| Rank | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Utah | 906 (20) |
| 2. | Kansas State | 889 (19) |
| 3. | Oklahoma State | 829 (14) |
| 4. | Kansas | 772 (5) |
| 5. | Arizona | 762 (3) |
| 6. | Iowa State | 651 |
| 7. | West Virginia | 581 |
| 8. | UCF | 551 |
| 9. | Texas Tech | 532 |
| 10. | TCU | 436 |
| 11. | Colorado | 400 |
| 12. | Baylor | 268 |
| 13. | BYU | 215 |
| 14. | Cincinnati | 196 |
| 15. | Houston | 157 |
| 16. | Arizona State | 141 |
Utah was the favorite to win the league, receiving 20 of 61 first-place votes, narrowly edging out Kansas State (19) and Oklahoma State (14) for the top spot in the poll.
Meanwhile, teams like Colorado, BYU, and Arizona State were picked to finish near the bottom of the league standings. While there’s still a month of the regular season remaining, we’ve got nine weeks of data to look at.
Counting the aftermath of Week 9, we’ve seen a total of 39 conference games. In those games, betting underdogs are a combined 24-15 against the spread and an astonishing 18-21 straight up. Where else are you going to see underdogs winning games — outright — at nearly a 50% clip?
Suffice it to say; the Big 12 standings heading into Week 10 couldn’t differ more from the preseason projections if they’d been drawn randomly out of a hat.
Big 12 Football Standings (October 29, 2024)
| Rank | Team | Conf. | Overall | Preseason Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | BYU | 5-0 | 8-0 | 13 |
| 2. | Iowa State | 4-0 | 7-0 | 6 |
| 3. | Kansas State | 4-1 | 7-1 | 2 |
| 4. | Colorado | 4-1 | 6-2 | 11 |
| 5. | Cincinnati | 3-2 | 5-3 | 14 |
| 6. | TCU | 3-2 | 5-3 | 10 |
| 7. | Texas Tech | 3-2 | 5-3 | 9 |
| 8. | West Virginia | 3-2 | 4-4 | 7 |
| 9. | Arizona State | 2-2 | 5-2 | 16 |
| 10. | Baylor | 2-3 | 4-4 | 12 |
| 11. | Houston | 2-3 | 3-5 | 15 |
| 12. | Utah | 1-4 | 4-4 | 1 |
| 13. | Arizona | 1-4 | 3-5 | 5 |
| 14. | UCF | 1-4 | 3-5 | 8 |
| 15. | Kansas | 1-4 | 2-6 | 4 |
| 16. | Oklahoma State | 0-5 | 3-5 | 3 |
Not a single Big 12 team is currently ranked where it was projected to finish in the preseason, and three teams in the current top five were ranked 11th or worse in the preseason poll (BYU, Colorado, Cincinnati).
Undoubtedly the craziest part about the Big 12 standings, though, is how the preseason top five has fared. Kansas State, who was No. 2 in the preseason poll, is among the top contenders for a league title and is currently third in the rankings with a 7-1 record and a 4-1 record in conference play.
However, the rest of the preseason top five have literally flipped to the inverse side of the hierarchy and are among the bottom five in the standings: Utah (No. 1) is 12th, Oklahoma State (No. 3) is 16th, Kansas (No. 4) is 15th, and Arizona (No. 5) is 13th.
To this point, those four teams have an astounding 3-17 record in conference play and a 12-19 record overall. Talk about misreading the room.
Again, there is still plenty of time for things to change, but as of Week 10, Utah, Oklahoma State, Kansas, and Arizona are all out of the Big 12 race and don’t even have odds on the board to get to Arlington. That’s a far cry from what any of us expected.
The top teams in the league — aside from Kansas State — have seemingly come out of nowhere to stake their claim among the best stories in college football thus far. Who knows, November could see some regression towards what was predicted, but at this point, it seems highly unlikely.
