The Case for the Big 12 as College Football’s Best Conference

Every single year, there is always a debate about which conference is the top one in college football. You have your SEC homers chanting “S-E-C! S-E-C!” from the top of their lungs, as well as the Big Ten fans who say that the last two national champions have come from their conference. 

Call me biased, but I believe the Big 12 is the best conference in all of college football. Sure, it doesn’t have as many national championships as the Big Ten or the SEC does, and it may not get as many teams into the College Football Playoff, but it is still the best football conference in my eyes.

Before you call me crazy (which is not the worst thing I’ve been called over the years), hear me out: As great as the Big Ten and SEC are when it comes to national championships, take a look at the rest of the conference.

My original plan was to include the Big Ten and SEC in a single article, but I decided to turn this into a series, focusing on each major conference. Today, I take a look at the Big 12, which has quickly turned into the most interesting conference in the country.

There have been numerous changes in the Big 12 over the past 15 years. In 2011, Nebraska and Colorado joined the Big Ten and Pac-12, respectively. Just a year later, Texas A&M and Missouri joined the SEC.

The conference remained at ten for a decade before four new members were added in 2022, including BYU, Houston, Cincinnati, and UCF. By then, the Big 12 had a new commissioner in Brett Yormark, and Texas and Oklahoma were on their way out just a year later to the SEC.

But more help was on the way thanks to the Pac-12 imploding due to poor leadership. After Texas and Oklahoma left, the conference added four more schools: Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado (welcome back).

Now that my little history lesson is over, we can move on to the topic at hand: why the Big 12 is the best conference in college football. The first thing is the unpredictability of the conference.

Ever since the Big 12 championship game was reinstated in 2017, we have never seen the same matchup. In fact, we have seen eight different schools (current and former) make their way to Jerry World. No other conference in the country can make that claim.

And if you want to look even deeper into how unpredictable this conference truly is, then look no further than what happened last year. Arizona State was picked to finish dead last in 2024, and they ended up not only winning the Big 12 but were a play away from taking down arguably the top SEC team in the College Football Playoff.

If that isn’t crazy, then take a look at the standings from last year. If you see the top five, you will find Arizona State, Iowa State, BYU, Colorado, and Baylor. Not a single one of those teams was in the top five when the preseason poll came out. In fact, Iowa State was the only one of those schools selected to finish in the top ten.

You can argue that when Texas and Oklahoma left, there was no true flagship program in the Big 12 anymore. There was no national brand, no blueblood, and guess what? This conference doesn’t need one. It doesn’t need an Alabama, Ohio State, or Clemson.

There is no easy answer when it comes to picking a champion. As someone who has taken the SAT and filled out Big 12 preseason polls, I can assure you that the SAT was easier. You are better off writing each school on a separate piece of paper and drawing them out of a bucket to try and predict the order of the Big 12 than actually sitting down and trying to figure it out using your brain.

When you truly think about the conference from top to bottom, the gap isn’t nearly as big as at other conferences. That is why it is the most competitive conference in college football. Anything can happen on any given Saturday (or Friday). Why? Because there is not a lot of separation between a lot of these teams.

As I mentioned earlier, the Big 12 doesn’t have the same level of hardware as the Big Ten, SEC, or even the ACC, for that matter. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t the most interesting conference in college football.

In this conference, you will find all the chaos you can handle mixed in with passionate fan bases. Every single game day is like a roller coaster ride. There are ups, downs, bumps, and everything in between. All you need to do is buckle up and enjoy the experience. The Big 12 isn’t just any conference; it’s America’s conference.