As the week wraps up, I wanted to start rolling out a new weekly feature on Heartland College Sports, titled: Winners and Losers. I know, very creative.
But, with so much news happening across the Big 12 Conference on a weekly basis, this gives you a quick rundown of what you may have missed, with my three biggest winners and losers from the week that was. Here you go for the week of July 11th, 2025.
Big 12 Winners
Brett Yormark
Brett Yormark had a strong press conference to open up Big 12 Football Media Days this week. He shared full support for a 5+11 College Football Playoff model, and stood up for the Big 12 at a critical time in the history of college football.
“I expect the Big 12 to earn multiple College Football Playoff bids this year,” Yormark said emphatically.
That isn’t a pipe dream; it’s a vote of confidence in a league stacked with competitive teams and national relevance. With nearly half the league eyeing CFP contention, Yormark is doing away with the disrespect from outlets and predicting big things on the gridiron this fall.
He didn’t stop there, either. When asked about the Big 12’s preferred playoff path going forward, he doubled down, saying, “5+11 is fair. It may not be the best solution today for the Big 12, but long term, it’s the right format for us.”
“I’ll double down on it,” Yormark continued. “I’m sure [ACC Commissioner] Jim Phillips will, and other conference commissioners will as well.”
This is exactly what the Big 12 needed.
Matt Campbell
Think everyone is chasing every dollar in college football? Not quite. At least not in Ames, Iowa.
Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell isn’t one to chase headlines, but at Big 12 Media Days, he dropped a line that’s sticking with everyone who heard it.
“Our top 20 guys took a pay cut to come back to Iowa State,” Campbell told ESPN’s Pete Thamel.
In a college football world built on NIL dollars and transfer offers, that’s about as rare as it gets. Campbell made it clear that his best players had bigger offers on the table, and they still chose to stay in Ames. Not for the cash, but for each other.
That says everything about what’s brewing inside the Cyclones’ locker room.
Iowa State doesn’t have a massive NIL war chest, and Campbell’s not pretending otherwise. But what he does have is buy-in. Players like Rocco Becht, Abu Sama, Jeremiah Cooper, and more are returning not because they couldn’t cash out elsewhere, but because they believe they’re building something that can win big.
Texas Tech Football
Texas Tech has been one of the most-discussed college football teams in the country this offseason after a spending blitz that has expectations very high in Lubbock.
Texas Tech athletes will earn roughly $55 million in NIL across all sports in 2025-26, including $20.5 million in direct revenue sharing under the recently approved House settlement. Most of that is going to the football team.
Big 12 football coaches were expressing jealousy at Joey McGuire’s new-found resources. The media was hounding Texas Tech during their media session this week, drawing, by far, the most attention of any team in Frisco.
Expectations are huge and Tech will get a ton of attention, but now: Can they live up to the hype?
Big 12 Losers
Scott Frost
UCF head coach Scott Frost didn’t shy away from reflecting on his misstep at Nebraska during Big 12 Media Days on Tuesday afternoon.
He put it simply: “Don’t take the wrong job.”
Frost explained the lesson behind that advice, saying, “I said I wouldn’t leave UCF unless it was someplace you could win a national championship. I got tugged in a direction to try to help my alma mater, and didn’t really want to do it. It wasn’t a good move. I’m lucky to get back to a place where I was a lot happier.”
Listen, I get he doesn’t want to take a ton of blame for what went wrong, but he can’t take no blame. Saying basically, it was all Nebraska’s fault, is ridiculous.
In his last 16 games coaching at Nebraska, he lost 10 games by a single score (8 points) or less. That’s not the fault of the University. That’s on him. And if his main takeaway from his Nebraska tenure is that he took the wrong job, I’m not convinced he can learn from his mistakes to help UCF turn around in a crowded and deep Big 12 Conference.
NCAA Tournament
In a Heartland College Sports exclusive, our Matthew Postins spoke with Brett Yormark about the future of the NCAA Tournament. And it sure sounds like the plan is to expand, assuming CBS and Turner Sports will make it worth their time.
“I will say from a conference perspective, access matters,” Yormark said. “More access is good for a conference like the Big 12, which is very deep when you think about our men’s basketball programs. We’ll see what happens.”
I disagree. This is what the SEC says about the College Football Playoff. Who cares if the Big 12 gets 10, 12 or 14 teams in the NCAA Tournament? There are probably 2-4 that can get to a Final Four. That’s it. Why water down the college basketball season even more? That’s all this accomplishes. Especially for the Big 12, which has the deepest conference in the country.
The whole point of a deep conference is to create an exciting regular season. This accomplishes the exact opposite.
If college basketball figured out how to make their regular season more compelling, they would get higher ratings, which would lead to bigger revenues, without having to bastardize the NCAA Tournament even further.
The Projected Bottom of the Big 12 Standings
An “unofficial” Big 12 Football Media Poll was conducted, and the bottom of the Big 12 Conference was what many of us expect it to be.
Now, the fans of Cincinnati, Oklahoma State, West Virginia, Arizona and UCF can point to last season when the Big 12 standings were largely upside down from preseason expectations. But it’s hard to see the path for these teams.
Colorado and Arizona State ended up with elite quarterback play. BYU had the top defense in the Big 12. Can any of these five teams duplicate either of those things?
That remains to be seen.
