Way-Too-Early Big 12 Predictions for 2026 (Place Your Bets, Ignore My Track Record)
What’s the most sacred tradition in college football media? Making confident predictions in July, then quietly discounting those predictions by Week 7. In that spirit, here’s how I see the Big 12 shaking out.
The Favorite (Obviously)
Texas Tech enters the season as the consensus preseason favorite, and also as the center of the single weirdest offseason storyline in the conference. Tech’s QB1, Brendan Sorsby, was ruled permanently ineligible by the NCAA, won a court injunction that briefly un-ruled that, and then he dropped the whole thing to enter the supplemental draft, which he was later denied. Whew, talking about a roller coaster. But wait, that’s not all! It was reported that the Big 12 conference office and Texas Tech’s own athletic department were taking shots at each other, with actual legal threats thrown around. That’s not a typical “well, we’ll miss him” storyline; that’s an offseason soap opera. Somehow, Texas Tech is still the favorite. Which says a lot about the gap between their roster and everyone else’s. Will Hammond is stepping in as QB1, and Coach McGuire stated he would be ready Week 1. If Hammond is as good as, or better than, he was before last year’s injury, behind a roster that’s already the deepest in the conference, then Texas Tech fans should go ahead and book their hotel in Arlington.
The Field Chasing Them
BYU is the clear co-favorite. Bear Bachmeier returns after winning the Big 12 Offensive Freshman of the Year and taking BYU to the conference title game. Running back LJ Martin, reigning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year, passed on the NFL to return for his senior season. The defense gets a new coordinator rather than a full overhaul and returns several key pieces. The biggest question mark is the receiving room, which will have to replace its top two options from a year ago. If they get that piece right, this is about as complete a roster as anyone in the conference. Any wobble in Texas Tech’s quarterback situation, and BYU is the team built to capitalize.
Utah enters a genuinely new era under first-time head coach Morgan Scalley, promoted after 21 seasons as the program's defensive coordinator, and he's inheriting an 11-win roster rather than rebuilding one. The Utes kept exactly what made them good: a two-quarterback rotation, with Devon Dampier (2,490 passing yards, 835 rushing yards, 34 total touchdowns) and Byrd Ficklin splitting snaps, behind a run game anchored by Wayshawn Parker, who led the Big 12 at 6.6 yards per carry. The one real red flag: Utah is replacing all five starting offensive linemen, which means the identity of this team is proven, but the group tasked with protecting it is almost entirely new. New coaches inheriting good rosters rather than rebuilding them tend to overperform preseason expectations; worth watching how much the O-line turnover complicates that pattern.
Arizona is the conference’s most slept-on contender. Noah Fifita is back after a resurgent second season under Brent Brennan that produced nine wins; one of just three seasons this century the program has hit that mark, and this year’s schedule sets up a stretch in the final five weeks (at Texas Tech, vs. TCU, vs. Utah, at Kansas State, home vs. Arizona State) that could single-handedly decide who’s playing in Arlington. If Arizona goes .500 or better in that gauntlet, they’re not just a contender; they’re the team that decided everyone else’s season too.
Houston has the clearest, most specific path to Arlington of anyone chasing Texas Tech, and it runs through one night: September 19th, in Lubbock, under the lights in primetime on FOX. Beat writers already have Houston picked for third in the conference, and the case is real. Quarterback Conner Weigman is back after throwing for 2,705 yards and 25 touchdowns while adding another 700 yards and 11 scores on the ground, and receiver Amare Thomas is a legitimate All-America candidate coming off a 67-catch, 966-yard, 12-touchdown season. This is a team with actual firepower, not just a plucky underdog story.
Dark-Horse (Can there be two?)
Oklahoma State is the trendy "buy low" pick, and for good reason: Eric Morris didn't just take the Stillwater job, he brought roughly two dozen North Texas players with him, headlined by QB Drew Mestemaker, who threw for over 4,300 yards a season ago, and receiver Wyatt Young, who led the entire Big 12 in receiving yards while playing for a different team in a different conference. All told, it's closer to 55 transfers and 80 new players walking in at once, which means Morris didn't rebuild a roster so much as relocate one, address label and all. The receipts back it up: that North Texas offense scored 45-plus points nine times last season, while Oklahoma State failed to crack 27 in a single game all year. A team that lost by 66 points to Oregon in 2025 being talked about as a bowl team in 2026 is either a remarkable turnaround story or a cautionary tale about trusting transfer-portal hype. Time will tell which.
TCU has quietly won more games than any other team in the Big 12 over the last four seasons: 36 wins and a national championship game appearance under Sonny Dykes, and somehow still gets talked about like an afterthought behind Texas Tech, BYU, and Arizona State. This year's rebuild is real: starting quarterback Josh Hoover transferred out after throwing for 9,629 career yards, and Dykes went looking for his replacement in an unlikely place, the Ivy League, landing Harvard graduate transfer Jaden Craig, who threw for 5,299 yards and 48 touchdowns over two seasons at Harvard. The bigger fix might be simpler than a new quarterback, though: TCU went 8-0 last season when they didn't turn the ball over multiple times, and lost four of five when they did. Clean that up, and a program that's already out-won everyone else in the conference doesn't need much else to go right.
Why Not Us?
Arizona State enters a genuine reset year; the Sun Devils are replacing their quarterback, their leading receiver, and effectively rebuilding their running back room all at once, after Sam Leavitt left for a big-money LSU deal and Jordyn Tyson, as good as any receiver in the Big 12 when healthy, went 8th overall in the NFL Draft. The answer at quarterback is Kentucky transfer Cutter Boley, a live arm who went 4-7 as a starter last season with 12 interceptions and real questions as a processor, leaning on a receiver room led by Colorado transfer Omarion Miller, rated the best transfer receiver class in the country, and a running back room anchored by a healthy Kyson Brown. The one thing firmly in ASU's favor is continuity: Kenny Dillingham turned down real interest from Michigan, signed a new contract, and brought back every on-field assistant from a team that made the Big 12 title game two years ago. This is a program that won a conference title from a preseason-last position not that long ago, so writing them off entirely feels premature, but reloading at quarterback, receiver, and running back all in the same offseason, with a brutal schedule opening with the longest road trip in program history, is a real question mark, not a formality.
Kansas State is this year’s best bounce-back candidate. After being tabbed as a conference contender a season ago and finishing 6-6 instead, the Wildcats are betting on a healthier roster and a defensive line anchored by Wendell Gregory to get them back into the top half of the league. Fair warning: national outlets picked K-State to take a step back last year too, and got it completely wrong in the other direction; this is a program that’s become genuinely difficult to project, which either means buy low now or wait for actual evidence in September.
Baylor is a program under real pressure disguised as a program with a shiny new quarterback. Dave Aranda enters the season on what multiple outlets are calling the hottest seat in the Big 12, coming off a 5-7 finish that would be his fourth losing season in five years if 2026 goes wrong. The offseason answer was landing DJ Lagway, a former five-star recruit out of the Florida transfer portal, in a move reported to carry a price tag in the $3 million range, Baylor's single largest bet of the NIL era, by a wide margin. Aranda also gave up defensive play-calling entirely, handing the reins to new coordinator Joe Klanderman after admitting the dual-role experiment had failed. Between the quarterback investment and the coaching staff shake-up, this reads less like a normal season and more like Aranda's last real swing to keep his job, which makes Baylor probably the highest-stakes storyline in the entire "Why Not Us?" tier, regardless of where they actually finish.
There’s Always Next Year
West Virginia: Overhauled. (New roster, same question marks.)
Colorado: Hopeful. (Aren’t we all.)
Kansas: Fading. (Historically, right around Halloween.)
UCF: Retooling. (Again.)
Cincinnati: Transitioning. (Ask again in three years.)
Iowa State: Blank-Slate. (Literally; zero returning starters.)