Big 12 in Dangerous CFP Spot; Which Four Teams Can Save the Conference?

Is the Big 12 in danger of becoming a one-bid conference for the College Football Playoff again?

Saturday began on a hopeful note for the Big 12, but Week 2 ultimately took a turn for the worse. No. 12 Arizona State was upset by Mississippi State. Kansas blew a lead to Missouri. West Virginia and Kansas State both lost to non-power conference teams. And that's all before mentioning the thrashing Oklahoma State took against Oregon.

Now, the Big 12 sits in a challenging spot not just for this season, but beyond, FOX Sports lead college football analyst Joel Klatt argued.

"It puts the Big 12 as a conference behind the eight-ball," Klatt said of the Big 12's Week 2 performance on the most recent episode of his podcast. "Remember where we're at now in the greater conversation of college football, which is that it's not just that we're always going to be in this 12-team playoff, where your champion gets in and then you're searching for at-large bids. There is constant discussion about what the format of the playoff is going to be moving forward.

"This is a big year for the Big 12 in order to argue that, ‘Hey, we need multiple spots as automatics,’" Klatt added. "[Big 12 Commissioner] Brett Yormark, I think, knows that. To put it honestly, that's a bad Saturday for the Big 12."

From a conference narrative standpoint, Arizona State's 24-20 loss to Mississippi State was arguably the worst of the Big 12's losses in Week 2. Not only was it a ranked team losing to an unranked team, but the Sun Devils are the reigning Big 12 champions, while the Bulldogs finished in last place in the SEC with two wins in 2024.

Results like that, Klatt argued, help strengthen the narrative for the SEC, which he said would almost certainly receive a handful of bids in this year's College Football Playoff. The Big Ten had the most CFP berths among any conference last year and appears prime to get a few bids again in 2025. As for the ACC, it got two bids last year, and with Miami (Fla.)'s and Florida State's Week 1 wins, it now put the conference in a strong position to earn multiple CFP bids again, according to Klatt.

So, after being the only power conference to have just one team play in the CFP last season, the Big 12 is staring at the possibility of that being the reality again in 2025.

"[Week 2] is going to put an immense amount of pressure on the teams now that will be carrying the banner for the conference because those teams can't get eaten up through the schedule like they did a year ago with this league that has a lot of parity, which has a lot of teams that are similar to one another, and we always anticipate a lot of these games in this conference that are going to come down to one score," Klatt said. "If you start knocking off the upper-echelon teams and they grab a loss here or a second loss there, you just aren't going to have multiple teams that have a real argument to get access to the College Football Playoff."

There are still eight teams in the Big 12 who are undefeated entering Week 3. But Klatt believes only Iowa State, TCU, Texas Tech and Utah can carry the torch for the conference in the CFP race, saying that two teams from that group have to eventually separate themselves from the pack.

"Those four teams are probably the class of the Big 12," Klatt said. "But again, an immense amount of pressure, because if they start stumbling along the way, then you're not going to get two auto-bids [in future iterations of the CFP] or two bids overall."

While none of those teams currently rank in the top 10 of the AP Top 25 Poll, Klatt is pretty bullish about each of them. He believes Texas Tech has a "pretty good" roster after landing the second-best class in the transfer portal this offseason (per 247Sports). He's also a fan of TCU quarterback Josh Hoover and thinks he can help the Horned Frogs contend in the conference.

Klatt seems particularly bullish about Iowa State and Utah, though, with the former picking up a key win over in-state rival Iowa this past week.

"I've been a big believer in Utah," Klatt said. "I think [quarterback Devon] Dampier is a hell of a player. His short-area quickness is very dangerous. But it's not just the fact that they have a quarterback at Utah. We know they're going to play solid defense, and I think they've got one of the better offensive lines in the entire country.

"Iowa State … is a really sound team under Matt Campbell, and a tough team to beat, in particular with their quarterback, Rocco Becht. I'm such a believer in Rocco Becht. The plays that he is able to make give that entire program a ton of confidence."

Still, the Big 12 has earned the reputation as a conference of chaos and parity in recent years. Last season, every team in the Big 12 had at least two losses in conference play. So, even the conference's elite teams haven't been immune to upset losses.

For the health of the Big 12, that can't happen again in 2025.

"They have got to separate, and hopefully, for the Big 12, two of those teams separate because what you want now for that conference is that two of those teams can reach the Big 12 championship game with no more than one loss," Klatt said. "What you would really hope for is an undefeated team against a team with maybe at most one loss. That's what they're hoping for, and it's going to be tough."

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