Will Arizona State get back to the Big 12 peak in 2026? The schedule doesn’t make it easy to buy into a fast repeat.
The Sun Devils were a fun team to track in 2024, when they won the Big 12 Championship convincingly and then turned in a pleasantly surprising College Football Playoff run. That version of Arizona State had the kind of underdog energy that made it easy to root for.
But the follow-up in 2025 was much more ordinary. ASU finished 8-5, and the year ended with a loss to Duke, one of the main antagonists to all things holy in college football last year.
Even so, the season wasn’t without a reminder of what this team can still do. Arizona State knocked off Texas Tech, a team that eventually landed as the CFP’s 4-seed. That result showed the ceiling is still there, and it keeps the idea of a 2026 bounce-back alive.
The problem is that the path to another Big 12 crown looks messy. The road slate is rough from the start, beginning with a September trip to Texas A&M at Kyle Field.
After that come visits to Texas Tech, BYU, UCF and Arizona. Texas Tech will be waiting for revenge, BYU is never a comfortable stop, UCF is the easiest of the group but still no bargain, and Arizona rounds out a difficult run away from home.
Conference play doesn’t offer much clarity either. Arizona State opens Big 12 action in London against Kansas, then gets an early bye before hosting Baylor.
Kansas is coming in with a well-coached group, and Baylor has been a mixed bag under Dave Aranda. That’s the kind of uncertainty that makes the league hard to map out.
The rest of the Big 12 schedule is filled with teams that are tough to pin down. Kansas State arrives with a new head coach and sits between Texas Tech and BYU on the calendar.
Colorado comes next, wedged between BYU and UCF, after two seasons that have looked nothing alike. Oklahoma State, placed between UCF and Arizona, brings a complete overhaul on both the roster and the sideline.
Even Hawaii may not be the soft landing it looks like, since the Rainbow Warriors are coming off a boom of a 2025 season and visit Tempe right before Arizona State heads to Texas Tech.
Kenny Dillingham has already shown he can steer the Devils through a lot of this kind of uncertainty, so this doesn’t feel like a warning of a full-blown collapse. But another 2024-style surge is hard to see in this setup. A five-loss season might be the more realistic target, even if that’s not the kind of follow-up anyone wanted after CFP football.
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