Week 1 turned out to be a good week for the Big 12. The conference went 13-2 overall, with only Baylor and Oklahoma State losing games.
Combined with TCU’s Week 0 loss to North Carolina, the conference went 13-3 in season openers. It sets a good tone for a conference that is hoping to send more than one team to the College Football Playoff.
So who’s stock went up and who’s stock went down? Let’s look at the big movers across the league.
Stock Up
Colorado
I must admit. I thought the Buffaloes were going to lose to Georgia Tech going into Thursday’s game. With just a handful of seconds left it looked like that’s where the game was headed. That is until Colorado special teams blocked the potential game-winning field goal as time expired to seal a win that could be huge for the Buffs’ season.
With Weber State and Northwestern coming up, there’s a chance Colorado could be 3-0 going into their Big 12 opener against Baylor on Sept. 26. That would put the Buffs on potential turnaround footing after a 3-9 2025.
I’m not saying there aren’t issues. The offense was not scintillating. But being 1-0 and building on the momentum of a game-winning blocked field goal is a heck of a lot better than going home 0-1.
Cincinnati
It was a good week for the Bearcats. Earlier in the week, the NCAA cleared them of any wrongdoing in the whole Brendan Sorsby debacle. Then, they went out and beat Boston College, 34-15. BC went 2-10 last year. This was a game Cincinnati couldn’t afford to lose. It was not a perfect game. The Bearcats got fewer than 100 passing yards out of new quarterback JC French IV. But Cincinnati augmented that with 254 rushing yards. Cincy must clean up the fumbles (it had three). But I really liked how Cincinnati ran the ball. That will play well in this conference.
Teams that take on a power conference team in Week 1 are at a bit of a disadvantage because neither has played anyone except their own players for nine months. This sets Cincinnati up for a potential 3-0 start going into Big 12 play.
The FCS Feast
The Big 12 gets to play “money games” too. They just don’t get as much attention because they play them in September when they’re supposed to be played.
The schools in this conference should have the resources to win those types of games, and they did in Week 1. In fact, it wasn’t particularly close.
Between Utah (def. Idaho), UCF (def. Bethune-Cookman), Kansas (def. LIU), Texas Tech (def. Abilene Christian), BYU (def. Utah Tech), Iowa State (def. Southeast Missouri), Kansas State (def. Nicholls), Arizona (def. Northern Arizona) and Arizona State (def. Morgan State), the Big 12 went 9-0 and won by a combined score of 500-70.
The good news for those FCS schools is their paycheck from the Big 12 schools likely included a “five” — or higher — at the front of the check, with five zeroes behind it before the decimal.
Stock Down
Oklahoma State
It was a buzzy offseason for the Cowboys with new head coach Eric Morris and 91 new players, including rising stars at quarterback (Drew Mestemaker), running back (Caleb Hawkins) and wide receiver (Wyatt Young).
But on Saturday against Tulsa, the Cowboys played like a team with 91 new players. The offense was disjointed, the offensive line struggled against Tulsa’s front four, and the searing heat eventually wore the Oklahoma State defense down in a 24-10 loss.
Oklahoma State can still be a good team this season. But the bloom is off the rose. Morris and his coaching staff have some serious work to do.
ESPN As Big 12 TV Partner
The Houston opener with Oregon State turned into compelling television. The Beavers came down from Corvallis, Ore., and gave the Cougars a game before Houston won, 33-20.
ESPN did the Big 12 and the Cougars dirty here. First, it put the game in an 11 a.m. CT window. Hey, Bristol, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s pretty hot down here, and that humidity in Houston is no joke. I went to Houston’s opener against SFA last year (because I’m an SFA alum), and it was a 7 p.m. game, and man, I was soaked with sweat by the end of the first quarter — and I wasn’t even playing.
But then the Worldwide Leader doubled down. With nine minutes left in the game and the score 26-20, ESPN shuffled the game from its primary network to ESPNNews to make room for the kickoff of … Texas State-Texas. Gross. Did we learn nothing from the “Heidi Game”.
How many times have we all been stuck watching the ACC game on Big Monday, waiting for it to end so we can get to the Big 12 basketball game in the late window? And ESPN can’t stick with a one-score Big 12 game during football? It must move it to a network that is almost unfindable on cable for an SEC happy meal game?
Is this what Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark was on the phone about while he was in Cincinnati? It was around that time.
I write about the business end of college sports all the time here, and I like to give the networks the benefit of the doubt. But that reeked of ESPN’s bias against the Big 12 when it comes to the TV “partnership.”
West Virginia
Man, running back Cam Cook had a day for the Mountaineers. He rushed for 142 yards and two touchdowns in his debut in Morgantown. Quarterback Michael Hawkins rushed and passed for more than 100 yards. You would expect good offensive numbers from WVU.
But that defense got cooked against Coastal Carolina quarterback Deuce Bailey, who threw for 373 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions as the Chanticleers lost, 31-24.
Of all the games against Group of 6 or FCS teams, this was the closest. Only beating Coastal by a score isn’t the bad part. That’s a good Sun Belt team. Watching the Mountaineer defense give up nearly 400 passing yards is the rough part and it’s not a good sign for a re-made defense this offseason. Plus, defensive lineman Darius Wiley was carted off during the game.
Hold
Baylor
Man, what a strange game. The Bears lost one of their top defenders, Jacob Redding, to an ACL tear this week and it was reported right before the game. Then, quarterback DJ Lagway suffered an ankle injury (head coach Dave Aranda confirmed that after the game, saying it was likely a sprain). Both teams looked sluggish and the Bears lost the game nearly the exact same way they won the 2021 Big 12 Championship game over Oklahoma State?
Man, it’s like Karma just decided to mess with the Bears all afternoon in a winnable game against an Auburn team with a new head coach. I’m going to withhold my judgment on Baylor for a couple more weeks, mostly because we need to know more about the severity of DJ Lagway’s injury. If he’s that productive as a passer (333 yards), the Bears can still make some noise.
