2025 is about to be wrapped up, with 2026 right around the corner. As always, it’s a good chance to look back on the year that was a find all the stories that surprised us and stole the headlines. And in the Big 12, it was the first time in several years we (generally) weren’t talking realignment. And I’m OK with that. But if you think that means it was a quiet year for the conference, you’d be wrong.
It was a busy year in the Big 12, and here are my Top 5 stories from 2025.
1. BYU’s College Football Playoff Disrespect
The Big 12 Conference seems poised to be a one-team conference in the College Football Playoff for the foreseeable future. If BYU, who went 11-1, made the Big 12 Championship, and lost to a Top 4 team in the country for a second time, can’t get even serious consideration for an at-large bid, then who can?
If you had told me before the season that the Big 12 season would play out the way it did, I would have said BYU would be in a strong spot to at least be considered. But the Cougars really never were under consideration down the stretch of the season. One loss on the road to Texas Tech appeared to sink them, and only an upset of Texas Tech in Arlington could have saved them.
It’s a brutal reality that the league is not viewed in a respectable light by the CFP committee. I don’t agree, but it’s also why the best thing that can happen to the Big 12 as a whole this postseason is a Texas Tech National Championship to prove that the Red Raiders really were that good this season, which will help lift the rest of the league.
2. Rise of Texas Tech Athletics
Obviously there are the money sports getting attention, most notably football, with the Red Raiders in the College Football Playoff and winning the Big 12 Conference for the first time ever. But, it’s also the success of other sports like softball, who was led by star pitcher NiJaree Canady, and won the Big 12 softball championship and reached the National Championship where they lost to Texas. The Red Raiders also won the women’s and men’s track and field championship as well. Texas Tech is fully invested into athletics with its big donors like Cody Campbell and successful NIL program, and it doesn’t look like the Red Raiders are going anywhere in competing for championships in sports across the board.
3. Football Coaching Turnover
The Big 12 said goodbye to some of its longest-tenured coaches, not just in the league, but in all of college football. Mike Gundy and Kyle Whittingham each had two decades at Oklahoma State and Utah, respectively, and one was fired (Gundy), while on stepped down (Whittingham). They were two of the top three longest-tenured coaches in all of college football, along with Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz. But then the latter ends up at Michigan. Meantime, for several off-seasons in a row, Iowa State fans have dealt with rumors on Matt Campbell leaving. Well, he finally did, taking the head coaching job at Penn State.
And then there was Chris Klieman stepping down at Kansas State to pave the way for Collin Klein’s return. Gundy, Campbell and Klieman, in particular, were staples of the “Original 8” Big 12 teams for the last several years together in this league, and now they’re all gone.
4. Private Equity and the Big 12
This story is not jus about the Big 12, it’s about the future of college sports as we know it, and the Big 12 may be the first to rip the band-aid off the private equity role in college athletics. Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger first broke the news about the Big 12’s negotiations with RedBird and Weatherford Capital. To review, the two entities are proposing a $500 million infusion of cash into the Big 12 Conference. The Big 12 gets money and RedBird’s expertise in driving new investment opportunities. Big 12 schools would have access to up to $30 million in cash as needed, though no school is obligated to use the money. And the league office would build a strategic relationship to make the Big 12 office more “professionalized.” Here’s the breakdown. The league office will get $25 million for a new entity called Big 12 Properties and the $30 million pool will be there for each team. That’s adds up to $505 million. But, again, schools aren’t obligated to tap into it or even tap into all of it.
There are still many questions surrounding how this will exactly work, but between the Big 12 deal, and then Utah becoming the first program to make a team-specific private equity deal were game changers in the sport and is just the beginning of what’s to come in college sports.
5. Houston’s Wild Final Four
The Houston Cougars were on the verge of their first-ever NCAA Tournament National Championship. Houston played the Florida Gators in the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship, with Florida winning 65-63 in a dramatic comeback victory on April 7, 2025, securing their third national title despite Houston leading by as many as 12 points earlier in the game, with Will Richard leading the Gators and Houston unable to get a final shot off.
This dramatic game was preceded by Houston coming from 14 points down to beat Duke in the National semifinals 70-67. The win would have been the first in Cougars history, and the first for the Big 12 since Kansas in 2022. And it would have been a great capstone on Kelvin Sampson‘s Hall of fame career. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be, as Houston
Honorable Mention: College GameDay Remembers the Big 12
I’m not looking to pat ourselves on the back, but the Big 12 Conference was in the midst of a three-year drought for hosting a College GameDay event, and the league got to host the ESPN show for two-straight weeks this season. The first game was Cincinnati vs. Utah, followed by Texas Tech vs. BYU in late October and early November.
We had spent days shaming ESPN over the fact that it hand not been on a Big 12 campus since 2022, when Kansas hosted TCU. And boom, right after that, the Big 12 got a bunch of love for two weeks in a row. This is the article I wrote in mid-October shaming the show, not just for avoiding a Big 12 campus, but also for its lack of Big 12 coverage throughout the three-hour show.
Thankfully, the Big 12 worked its way back into the mix, albeit still having issues with the Worldwide Leader’s Big 12 coverage.
