For a few weeks, it was easy to treat the Big 12 like background noise while the Big Ten and SEC soaked up the oxygen. That changed in a hurry in Week 7, when the league’s top end and its deeper middle all landed punches that were hard to ignore.
BYU delivered the headline grabber, taking down a Notre Dame team that had won 16 straight games by double digits. The Cougars’ win came in controversial fashion, but it still pushed them to their highest AP Top 25 ranking since 1984 and put them in the conversation as a real title contender.
Texas Tech followed with its most convincing win of the season and stayed unbeaten in conference play. Houston handled a crucial league game against Oklahoma State.
Utah survived a furious push from unranked Colorado and climbed into the sport’s top 10.
That kind of weekend doesn’t just move rankings. It changes the way a conference gets talked about.
As many as five Big 12 teams are now in the AP Top 25, with three in the top 10. Half of the nation’s remaining unbeaten teams come from the league.
For a conference long viewed as the Big Ten and SEC’s little brother, that is a pretty loud rebuttal.
The reputation didn’t come from nowhere. The last national champion from the Big 12 was the 2005 Texas Longhorns, and when the conference finally got back to the title game with TCU in 2023, Georgia rolled to a 65-7 win - the most lopsided title game ever. That history has lingered, even as the league has kept finding its way into the playoff picture.
This year’s nonconference record against the Power 4 sits at 6-7. That’s better than the Big Ten’s 4-10 mark, though nowhere near the SEC’s 10-2.
Even so, the Big 12 remains a serious player in the race for the sport’s most valuable prize: a second College Football Playoff bid. In each of the last two seasons, the conference got only its automatic spot in the soon-to-be-extinct 12-team bracket.
If the CFP were set today, Texas Tech and BYU would both project into the field.
And yet, for all that momentum, there was still a sense entering 2026 that the league might be missing a true heavyweight. Texas Tech was the favorite, but the quarterback situation after the Brendan Sorsby saga was a real question.
BYU had back-to-back double-digit win seasons on its résumé, but conference slipups in both years and concerns at receiver invited doubt. Utah had the benefit of returning key Kyle Whittingham starters in the offensive backfield, though first-year coach Morgan Scalley brought uncertainty.
Oklahoma State carried its own unknowns with a transfer-heavy roster, while Houston and the newly minted 25th-ranked Arizona Wildcats looked more like sleepers than proven contenders.
Now the league looks very different. The Big 12 has three undefeated teams, three one-loss teams in conference play, and a real foothold in the CFP conversation. The next few weeks should only sharpen the picture as the conference starts beating up on itself: Houston-Utah in Week 8, Arizona-Texas Tech in Week 9 and BYU against Utah in the Holy War in Week 10.
Those games will sort out the pecking order. They’ll also keep proving the point Week 7 already made clear: the Big 12 is no longer a league to glance past.
In Other News...
Rece Davis Turns BYU Win Into Bigger Officiating Fight
The fallout from BYUs win over Notre Dame kept moving well after the final whistle, with ESPNs Rece Davis taking aim at the officiating mistake that ended the game with the Irish out of time for one last snap. The Big 12 later acknowledged the error, saying one second should have remained on the clock and promising a review of the replay officiating process, which only added to the sense that the finish was about more than just one result.
Davis also tied the episode into a broader conversation that has been simmering around the College Football Playoff expansion debate, using the clock mishap as another example of why the sport keeps getting pulled into bigger questions about fairness and control. For BYU, the win stands, but the way it ended has ensured the discussion will linger well beyond one Saturday night. [Read more 🡒]
BYU Just Got The Statement Win Fans Dreamed About
Bear Bachmeier gave BYU the kind of all-around performance that can change the way a season feels, helping the Cougars outlast Notre Dame in a 28-24 win that should resonate well beyond one Saturday. The sophomore quarterback was effective as a passer and a runner, and the offense found another steady presence in tight end Walker Lyons, who kept showing up as a reliable target when the game tightened up.
The result pushed BYU all the way to No. 2 in the Associated Press Top 25, a sign of how much national respect the Cougars earned with the victory. For a team trying to prove it belongs in the top tier, the bigger question now is how this performance carries over, because statement wins only matter if they become part of a pattern. [Read more 🡒]
BYU Just Turned The Big 12 Race Into Something Much Bigger
A wild Saturday across college football sent the AP poll into a spin, and BYU found itself at the center of it. Five of the top seven teams lost on the same day for the first time in the history of the poll, a shakeup driven by results all over the country as Miami moved to No. 1 after a double-overtime win against Florida State and the Cougars climbed to No. 2 after upsetting Notre Dame.
The bigger picture for BYU is how much larger its season has suddenly become. What had been a strong run inside the Big 12 now comes with national relevance, especially after a slate that also saw Ohio State beat Indiana, Tennessee knock off Alabama, Florida upset Texas and Auburn topple Georgia. The rankings changed fast, and with them the spotlight on a BYU team that has turned a conference race into something far more consequential. [Read more 🡒]