Once again, it’s truly anyone’s guess — there are several legitimate contenders, and as we saw last season, no conference is more ripe for a team coming out of nowhere to pull off a shocker.
Speaking of last season, defending conference champ Arizona State returns nearly all of its impact players from that stunning College Football Playoff run, including breakout star quarterback Sam Leavitt.
As we covered earlier, both teams playing today also return their starting quarterbacks (Kansas State’s Avery Johnson and Iowa State’s Rocco Becht). Ditto for Arizona, Baylor and TCU — and the electric but injury-plagued Jalon Daniels is back for one more run at Kansas as well.
Meanwhile, Texas Tech has spent millions assembling the conference’s most talented roster on paper. Deion Sanders lost his two best players at Colorado but has added more depth. Utah and Oklahoma State loom as proud programs that have reloaded after rough seasons.
For more on (the difficulty of) predicting the Big 12, Stewart Mandel has his conference forecast below.
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2025 Big 12 football predictions: Can Arizona State repeat in a wide-open conference?