The Big 12 Championship Game kicked off at 11:00 a.m. CT from Arlington, Texas between Iowa State and Arizona State. Both teams finished the regular season with a 7-2 record in the Big 12, with tiebreakers punching them tickets to the conference championship.
Arizona State was playing in the conference championship game in their first season in the Big 12 following their departure from the Pac-12. And Iowa State was playing in its first Big 12 Championship Game since 2020, when they lost to Oklahoma in the COVID-shortened season.
The winner of this game would punch a ticket to the College Football Playoff. And while the game was tied into the second quarter, the Sun Devils ran away with the game on their way to an 45-19 win over the Cyclones.
Here are the three biggest takeaways from the game.
Cam Skatte-Beast
Cam Skattebo had himself an incredible afternoon for the Sun Devils. In my prediction of this game on the Heartland College Sports YouTube Channel (subscribe here for my post-game reaction show), I predicted that the Cyclones, who had one of the worst running defenses in the Big 12, would struggle mightily to slow down Cam Skattebo and the Sun Devils on the ground.
But it was even worse than I expected. And it all started with this run in a 10-10 game early in the second quarter.
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The Sun Devils would go on to score on the drive and never look back. Later in the second quarter, Skattebo had another monster run that also resulted in a touchdown and put the Sun Devils up 24-10 at halftime.
Skattebo finished the first half with 11 carries for over 140 yards and two touchdowns. For the game, the running back had 16 carries for 170 yards and the two scores, averaging over 10 yards per carry. He also had two catches for 38 yards and one score.
The Wide Receiving Corps
The Arizona State wide receivers stepped up in a big way with the loss of Jordyn Tyson, their top wide receiver, who is out indefinitely after suffering an injury against Arizona last week.
So who stepped up? Senior Melquan Stovall had his best game of the season with four catches for 91 yards. And then Xavier Giollry had two catches for 29 yards, with both going for touchdowns, including one of the best catches of the year in the Big 12.
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Jordyn Tyson will definitely be missed in the College Football Playoff (assuming he can’t return), but the Sun Devils wide receiving corps show they have more talent than just Tyson, who got most of the attention and led the team in receiving this season.
Welcome to the College Football Playoff, Arizona State
The Sun Devils are now heading to the College Football Playoff after going 3-9 last season and with zero expectations coming in 2024. They were picked to finish 16th out of 16 teams in the conference in the preseason standings.
But in Week 1 after a 48-7 win over Wyoming, which was followed by a win vs. Mississippi State, it became pretty evident that this team was going to exceed expectations, the question was by how much. And the answer? A lot.
Arizona State only lost twice this season, at Texas Tech and at Cincinnati, with the latter being the one game that Sam Leavitt was not able to play due to an injury.
Now it remains to be seen whether or not the Sun Devils will receive a Top 4 seed and a bye in the College Football Playoff, and there’s no doubt this performance makes them worthy of a bye. This team should be seeded over Boise State. And they might have a shot at the No. 3 overall seed, if Clemson upsets SMU on Saturday night.
We’ll see what the committee has in store on Sunday afternoon.
