2026 Big 12 college football predictions: Don’t be surprised if Texas Tech is dethroned

From winning its first Big 12 championship to spending gobs and gobs of money to … well, Brendan Sorsby … it feels like Texas Tech has sucked up all the Big 12’s oxygen over the last 12 months. Vegas has tabbed the Red Raiders as the overwhelming favorite.

But there’s this other team out in Utah that’s gone 15-3 in conference play over the last two seasons that might have something to say about that. Plus, two other teams — Houston and Utah — are coming off double-digit-win seasons.

The team with the most money doesn’t always win the most games. I’m riding with the gang from Provo.

Here are my predicted standings, plus 10 other predictions for the 2026 Big 12 season.

Big 12 championship: BYU over Houston
Playoff teams: BYU

1. BYU upsets Notre Dame, fields its first top-10 team in 30 years. Kalani Sitake has lifted his program to the brink of the Big 12 title the last two seasons, going 23-4. This year, after Sitake turned down Penn State, the Cougars climb the mountaintop. With star QB Bear Bachmeier, 1,300-yard rusher LJ Martin and a veteran defense, BYU proves to be the class of the conference and finishes in the top 10 for the first time since Steve Sarkisian was the QB in 1996.

2. Willie Fritz returns to Arlington. Houston’s well-traveled head coach is one of the best in the sport, as he showed when he took long-dormant Tulane to the 2022 Cotton Bowl (and beat USC). The Cougars quietly won 10 games last year, and veteran QB Conner Weigman will have more weapons around him to propel the Cougars to the Big 12 title game at AT&T Stadium, the site of Fritz’s biggest triumph.

3. Texas Tech gets its comeuppance. The Red Raiders won’t implode without Sorsby, but don’t expect another 12-win season. Yes, the fighting Cody Campbells still have plenty of expensive talent, but the heart of last year’s top-ranked defense — Jacob Rodriguez, David Bailey and company — is in the NFL now.

4. Scott Frost, Rich Rodriguez show Year 2 progress. The two coaches who returned to their ex-employers last year both had losing first seasons, but now they have QBs who better fit their offenses: Frost landed JMU’s Alonza Barnett III at UCF, and Rodriguez brought in Oklahoma’s Michael Hawkins Jr. at West Virginia. Both their squads will reach bowl games.

5. Utah’s Morgan Scalley, Kansas State’s Collin Klein struggle in Year 1. Two former program legends became first-time head coaches at their alma maters. Scalley retained star QB Devon Dampier but must deal with a lot of staff and player attrition. Meanwhile, Wildcats QB Avery Johnson has shown he has a low-ish ceiling.

6. Eric Morris quickly turns around Oklahoma State. Mike Gundy’s program imploded over the last two seasons, going 4-20 overall and 0-18 in the Big 12. But Air Raid disciple Morris feels like an ideal fit — and he brought star QB Drew Mestemaker (No. 6 in The Athletic’s QB Tiers) and many others with him from North Texas. He’ll get the Cowboys back to a bowl.

7. Kansas successfully gets the band back together. Lance Leipold pulled off an all-time great turnaround in leading longtime disaster KU to nine wins in 2023. The Jayhawks’ two-year slide back to sub.-500 began when his trusted OC, Andy Kotelnicki, left for Penn State. He’s back, and the Jayhawks will be back to bowling.

8. The Deion Sanders era ends with a thud. Colorado brought in enough talent to be better than last year’s non-competitive 3-9 squad. But a complete turnover on defense, coupled with nonconference games at Georgia Tech and Northwestern, will lead to another losing season, after which both sides move in different directions.

9. Baylor’s Dave Aranda may be done, too. Since winning a Big 12 championship in his second season, Baylor has posted a winning record in conference play just once in the last four years. There’s hope that ex-Florida QB DJ Lagway can ignite the Bears’ offense, but it might not be enough to save Aranda’s job.

10. It’s going to be a rough, rough season in Ames. There’s no sugarcoating it: Iowa State could be awful. Seemingly half the team followed Matt Campbell to Penn State after AD Jamie Pollard hired Washington State’s Jimmy Rogers, who brought a bunch of guys with him from a 6-6 Group of 6 team.