The college football season wrapped up the regular season and the Big 12 Conference had eight games on the schedule in Week 14, with several teams still holding out hope of making the Big 12 Championship.
The action got underway with two games on Black Friday, and then six games on Saturday. There were rivalries, but several blowouts, and a Big 12 Championship Game picture that needed several games to figure out who would be playing in Arlington next Saturday for a league title.
Here are the Top 5 takeaways from Week 14 of the Big 12 football season.
Big 12 Championship Game is Set
The Big 12 Championship Game came down to the final game of the regular season to find out who was going to be playing for the league title. And it’s Arizona State vs. Iowa State for an all-but-guaranteed spot in the College Football Playoff next Saturday in Arlington, Texas.
Arizona State smoked Arizona 49-7 and then Iowa State handled K-State 29-21, but both still needed some help along the way to make it happen, with four teams finishing 7-2 atop the Big 12 standings.
But what a first year of the 16-team Big 12. The standings were basically inverted. Arizona State was picked dead last in the Big 12 Preseason Poll. Iowa State was picked to finish 6th. The other two teams to finish 7-2 were picked No. 11 (Colorado) and No. 13 (BYU).
Meantime, teams like Utah and Oklahoma State, two teams picked near the top of the preseason poll, finished near the bottom.
The Big 12 was a thriller of a regular season, but even way more unpredictable than any of us could have imagined.
Is Baylor Playing the Best Football in the Big 12?
The Baylor Bears ended the college football season with a six-game winning streak, and doing much of it in dominant fashion. This is Dave Aranda’s longest winning streak in Waco. The last time Baylor dominated in this fashion was when it won the first nine games of the 2019 season in Matt Rhule’s final year.
She won the six games by an average of 14.8 points, including Saturday’s 45-17 win over Kansas. Dave Aranda has bounced back in a big way from the 2023 three-win campaign. He entered the season on the hot seat, but the University confirmed he’s coming back for the 2025 season, which is well deserved.
Baylor returns key players in 2025 like quarterback Sawyer Robertson and running back Bryson Washington, along with lineman Jackie Marshall and linebacker Keaton Thomas on the defensive side.
Is Neal Brown Safe?
The West Virginia Mountaineers got blown out by Texas Tech 52-15 on Saturday. It’s fair to wonder whether or not Neal Brown is safe for the 2025 season. There are rumors suggesting he’s going to be back in 2025, but with the way the season ended, it’s fair to wonder whether or not WVU is going to have Brown return for season No. 6.
Brown and the Mountaineers went 6-6 after going 9-4 last season. Also, WVU’s schedule doesn’t include a single win over a team that became bowl eligible. After going 35-16 at Troy, Brown is 37-35 overall and 25-28 in his five seasons in the Big 12 Conference.
Things just haven’t come together for Brown, and in the NIL and Transfer Portal era, when teams can turn around quicker than in the old days of building up recruiting classes, it’s understandable by West Virginia fans are ready to say good bye. The question is whether or not the University will do it.
Goodbye, Gus
After two seasons in the Big 12 Conference as the head coach of the UCF Knights, Gus Malzahn elected to leave Central Florida and take his coaching abilities up north, where he is heading to be the offensive coordinator of the Florida State Seminoles.
Malzahn recruited very well, but could not translate that to wins. Malzahn won nine games his first two seasons at UCF, but then went 6-7 and 5-7 in two seasons in the Big 12, including a combined 5-13 in Big 12 Conference play.
His voluntarily resignation means he’s apparently forfeited most of the $12 million in contract buyout money he could have collected had he been fired. Gus deserves credit for that much, since most UCF fans seemed ready to move on.
Related: Seven Potential Replacements for Gus Malzahn at UCF
Brett Yormark Called ESPN
On Saturday, we had an exclusive at Heartland College Sports regarding Yormark calling ESPN about its coverage of the league.
We reported that Yormark called ESPN personally and “put a lot of pressure on the network to fix the way they spoke and showcased the Big 12 Conference”.
Coverage of the Big 12 by ESPN, most notably its flagship program College GameDay, has been sparse for most of the season. And then came Desmond Howard’s egregious mistake in early November, when he acted surprised as to why the panel was picking the K-State vs. Arizona State game, which had clear Big 12 implications two weeks ago.
There was a noticeable shift in tenor and tone during the Week 14 broadcast from College Station. There was Nick Saban talking extensively about Arizona State running back Cam Skattebo, saying, “That’s gotta be my favorite player in college football, man. This guy is rugged and tough, and I just love a great competitor, and he’s all that.”
It’s a step in the right direction given ESPN is still one of the two major TV partners of the league, but needless to say they have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust with the fans.
