November has arrived, and the Big 12 race is tightening fast. Utah keeps looking like the league’s most complete team, Kansas is heading into a difficult conversation about Lance Leipold, and Cincinnati is once again staring down a month that has been brutal under Scott Satterfield.
The clearest call on the board is Utah. I’ve been high on the Utes for weeks, and now I’m taking it one step further: Utah will beat BYU in the Holy War on Saturday and finish the regular season undefeated.
That’s not just about one game. It’s about how steady Utah has been from Week 1 through Week 9 while everyone else around the conference has taken turns wobbling.
BYU has shown some cracks over the last two weeks and doesn’t appear to be playing its best football. Utah, on the other hand, has stayed locked in.
Devon Dampier has been steady at quarterback, and Wayshawn Parker has developed into one of the conference’s most dangerous offensive weapons. Pair that with a defense that ranks among the Big 12’s best, and the Utes simply don’t give you many obvious flaws to attack.
The bigger point is consistency. Every other contender has had its ups and downs this season.
Utah hasn’t. That’s why I believe the Utes end BYU’s three-game winning streak in the rivalry and take another major step toward a Big 12 championship and a College Football Playoff berth.
Kansas, meanwhile, is at the point where the conversation has to get uncomfortable. Lance Leipold deserves credit for what he built when he first arrived. He helped turn around one of college football’s toughest jobs and delivered a memorable nine-win season that ended with a bowl victory.
But that season was three years ago.
Since then, the Jayhawks have gone 5-7 in back-to-back years and are sitting at 3-5 now with UCF, West Virginia, BYU, and Oklahoma State still ahead. At this stage, Kansas would be fortunate to reach 5-7. A 3-9 or 4-8 finish looks more realistic.
Leipold’s record at Kansas stands at 30-40 overall, with a 17-33 mark in Big 12 play. He has only one winning conference record in five seasons, and that number doesn’t appear likely to improve this year.
The work he did to lift the program matters, but programs eventually have to judge where they’re going, not just where they started. Right now, Kansas looks like a team that has leveled off - and maybe slipped.
Then there’s Cincinnati, where November has become a real problem. Since Scott Satterfield took over in 2023, the Bearcats are just 1-11 in November. That’s a staggering number for a program that wants to live near the top of the Big 12.
Last season showed exactly how quickly things can unravel. Cincinnati entered November at 7-1 and undefeated in conference play, with plenty of people treating the Bearcats as legitimate Big 12 title contenders. They lost their final four regular-season games.
Now they head into another tough November after a lopsided loss to Utah. The schedule does include some chances to get right, with Iowa State and Colorado both looking like winnable games. But road trips to Houston and BYU are also part of the month, and that makes the path tricky.
I think Cincinnati can still pick up a win or two before the season ends. But until the Bearcats prove they can handle November, it’s hard to trust them. The trend has gone on too long, and there’s nothing in the recent record that says this year will be different.
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