PROVO — Ecstasy to the depths of despair all in the span of seven days sums up life in the Big 12 since the conference brought in four Pac-12 programs two years ago.

Utah is the latest example, experiencing divergent emotional extremes one week apart earlier this month. After crushing Arizona State in a torrential rainstorm at home on Oct. 11, the Utes crashed last Saturday in a loss to bitter rival BYU.

After Utah humbled the Sun Devils, they were double-digit underdogs at home last week against seventh-ranked and previously-undefeated Texas Tech. Sure enough, Arizona State shocked the Red Raiders with a touchdown in the final minute to stun the team that hammered Utah last month.

The Cougars can relate, having gone through a similar scenario last November. Will Ferrin’s 44-yard field goal in the final seconds gave BYU a 1-point win over Utah, only for the Cougars to suffer a deflating loss to a sub .500 Kansas team the following game.

“It’s part of the deal,” Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham said. “You go from elation to devastation in a seven-day period of time and back and forth. But that’s what you sign up for. That’s the nature of this business.”

Risky business goes in lockstep with the Big 12, which has become nearly impossible to decipher. It’s why the conference owns the designation as the most competitive in all of college football.

“It would be fun if I didn’t have to work in it,” Utah athletic director Mark Harlan deadpanned after the BYU game.

The unpredictability makes the intense rivalry between BYU and Utah a great fit in the Big 12. Anything can happen with these two, exactly like the Big 12 has shown since expanding to include Utah, Colorado, Arizona and Arizona State after greed imploded the Pac-12.

Nobody had BYU unbeaten in mid-October after seven games. The oddsmakers didn’t even think the Cougars would beat the favored Utes.

Maybe now the Cougars will get the national respect they richly deserve dating back to last season. Think about it for a second — last week Indiana coach Curt Cignetti, who got rewarded with a contract extension worth more than $11 million annually for his outstanding work at a basketball school, has got his team ranked second.

Cignetti has brought life to a traditionally downtrodden program. Since taking over last season, his record is 18-2.

Guess who has an identical record. Yup, that would be the Cougars under coach Kalani Sitake, whose team is ranked No. 11.

“I wish I could say, yeah, I saw it coming,” Sitake said about the impressive record over the last 20 games. “I’m just taking it day by day and week by week. And, honestly, just super grateful and just appreciate the opportunity I have. It’s still a dream to me, because I grew up a BYU fan.”

The coach, in his 10th season, is that good. And so are the Cougars, no matter what people thought entering the season.

This much is true: Whatever we thought to be true over the summer seems a bit silly now. For that matter, the truth got distorted in the last seven days.

The prevailing thought was to count out Arizona State, defending Big 12 champion, after the Utah embarrassment. The reeling Sun Devils were not expected to upset the presumptive conference favorite from Lubbock.

Oops.

Another misjudgment involved BYU, which wasn’t expected to do much after losing its returning senior quarterback. No way the Cougars could contend with first-year freshman Bear Bachmeier, who arrived on campus in May, running the show.

Yet, here is BYU tied with Cincinnati for first place in the conference. Improbably the Cougars are 4-0 in the Big 12 (7-0 overall), owners of three fourth-quarter comebacks since conference play began.

Continuing the theory of discovery, Bachmeier is a freshman in name only. Choose a superlative to describe his play, they all fit.

“Love the physical way that he plays and he’s a tough kid,” Sitake said.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.