Week 10 shook up the Big 12 in all the ways fans have come to expect: a rivalry showdown at the top, a wild shootout in the middle of the standings, and two coaches walking away from ugly losses with the noise around their jobs getting louder.
Utah is the team setting the pace now. The No.
3 Utes beat No. 9 BYU 28-20 in the Holy War and, with that, pushed their odds of making the Big 12 Championship Game to 93% according to ESPN.
At 9-0 overall and 6-0 in league play, they’re the only unbeaten team left in the conference with three games still to play.
That win came with plenty of Utah fingerprints on it. Devon Dampier was a problem all night, and the defense slammed the door in the second half, holding BYU scoreless after halftime.
The Utes also intercepted Bear Bachmeier four times, including a pick at the goal line on the Cougars’ final drive. LJ Martin never really got going, which left Bachmeier carrying too much of the load in a hostile road setting.
That was a tough ask for the sophomore, and Utah made him pay for it.
Texas Tech is still right there too, and the Red Raiders had to earn every bit of their 53-48 win over West Virginia. The two teams piled up more than 800 yards of total offense in the first half alone, then the game tightened into a defensive fight after the break. Texas Tech eventually put together the go-ahead drive with a few minutes left, took a 51-48 lead, and then added a safety to finish it off.
The Red Raiders are now 5-1 and sitting alone in second place in the Big 12. They look positioned to get back to Arlington for a second straight season, but the road ahead gets real fast with a trip to Stillwater coming this weekend.
Thomas Castellanos has given the offense the spark it needed, and that matters because the defense is not what it was in 2025. If Texas Tech is going to win the league again, it’s going to need that dual-threat quarterback to keep making plays downfield.
Oklahoma State also made a loud statement of its own. The Cowboys went into Manhattan and beat Kansas State 66-28 in a game that was never really close after the opening stretch.
Caleb Hawkins ran for 175 yards and three touchdowns, all of them in the first half as Oklahoma State raced out to a 49-14 halftime lead. Drew Mestemaker was sharp too, completing 22 of 28 passes for 313 yards and four touchdowns while posting a QBR of 90.2.
Kansas State’s defense had no answers, and the numbers were brutal on the other side as well. Fourth-string quarterback Blake Barnett finished with a QBR of 1.0 for the Wildcats.
Oklahoma State is still alive in the title race, but it needs to beat Texas Tech this weekend to keep that path open. The matchup could be there for the taking, since Tech’s defense has shown vulnerability, but the Cowboys will need their own defense to hold up against a better opponent.
The pressure is also building in Lawrence and Fort Worth after two painful finishes. Kansas led 32-26 after trailing 26-7 in the third quarter, but the Jayhawks couldn’t close it out.
A 10-play, 73-yard drive ended with the Knights scoring the winning touchdown and converting the PAT in a 33-32 loss. It was a gut punch for Lance Leipold, even with the comeback effort.
TCU’s loss was just as rough in its own way. Sonny Dykes had the Horned Frogs up 28-20 on Arizona before the Wildcats scored a touchdown but missed the extra point.
Arizona then pulled off a pooch kick, recovered it, and turned that into a field goal for a 29-28 win. It was a brutal ending for Dykes, and both coaches are now dealing with growing heat from fan bases that are getting restless.
And then there’s Baylor, which keeps hanging around in a way that still feels hard to believe. Two weeks after firing Dave Aranda, the Bears are 4-2 in Big 12 play after back-to-back dominant wins over UCF and Iowa State, outscoring those two opponents 83-0 over the last two games. They’re one of five teams in the league at 4-2 or better heading into the final three weeks.
The schedule ahead is rough - at BYU, vs. Texas Tech and at Houston - so nobody is rushing to call Baylor a real championship contender.
But the turnaround has been real enough to keep the Bears in the conversation. The talent was always there; the consistency wasn’t.
That inconsistency cost Aranda his job, but it hasn’t taken Baylor out of the picture just yet.
In Other News...
UCF Finally Ended Its Road Misery In A Wild Kansas Finish
UCF walked out of David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium with a 33-32 win over Kansas, finally snapping a 12-game road losing streak in a game that swung back and forth until the final seconds. Alonza Barnett III delivered the decisive touchdown pass to Caden Piening with three seconds left, and Will Stone added the extra point to complete a finish that left the Jayhawks on the wrong end of a wild one.
For Kansas, the loss only added to the frustration of a game that featured multiple lead changes and plenty of momentum shifts before UCF seized it at the end. Josh Derry and Taevion Swint were among the Knights who made their presence felt, and the result gave UCF a badly needed breakthrough away from home while leaving plenty for Kansas to sort through after another tight finish slipped away. [Read more 🡒]
Kansas Fans Have Seen This Late-Game Collapse Far Too Often
Kansas had clawed back into the game and put itself in position to escape with a road win, only to watch it slip away in the final seconds against UCF. The finish was as chaotic as it was painful, with multiple reviewed plays shaping the closing stretch before the Knights cashed in on a walk-off touchdown catch and the extra point that sent the Jayhawks home with a 33-32 loss.
For Lance Leipolds team, the result fit an all-too-familiar script. Kansas has now lived through too many late-game defeats under Leipold, and this one stung because the comeback was real, the margin was there, and the decisive play came after a sequence that already had the game teetering on the edge. Caden Piening delivered the touchdown that ended it, leaving Kansas with another reminder of how quickly a promising finish can unravel. [Read more 🡒]
Kansas Football Is Drifting Toward A Reset It Can Barely Afford
Kansas footballs slide this fall has put Lance Leipold in an uncomfortable spotlight, with the Jayhawks sitting at 3-6 and the path back to bowl eligibility growing narrower by the week. For a program that had finally started to feel stable under Leipold, the current drift is jarring, especially as the losses pile up and the questions around the direction of the team get louder.
Leipolds overall mark at Kansas now sits at 30-40, and the financial reality around any coaching change only adds another layer of hesitation. His buyout would be $17.9 million if he is fired after December 1, 2026, and with a major stadium construction project already stretching the programs resources, the Jayhawks are staring at a reset that would be expensive to make and even harder to justify. [Read more 🡒]