As June is coming to an end, that means the return of Big 12 Conference football isn’t that far away.
Looking back at the conference standings from the 2020 season, the top two teams are likely to do battle again in the title game. Both the Oklahoma Sooners and the Iowa State Cyclones return a vast majority of their teams. The Cyclones also return the top rusher in all of college football, Breece Hall. The Sooners return the top Heisman candidate in Spencer Rattler. We could be on a collision course for another epic showdown in the Big 12 Championship game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Just below these two, you have the two biggest rivals for the Sooners in the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma State Cowboys. Both teams have a lot of issues to overcome as the season draws near. The Longhorns shuffled their entire staff after firing Tom Herman to bring in Steve Sarkisian as the new head coach. They lost four-year starter at quarterback in Sam Ehlinger to the NFL draft. Which quarterback will emerge is a major talking point.
For Mike Gundy and the Cowboys, their season will hinge on the growth of quarterback Spencer Sanders. He will need to guide OSU back to the top without two of his biggest weapons in 2020. Chuba Hubbard and Tylan Wallace are now gone, so who will step up for the Pokes?
Once you get beyond the top four teams in the conference, it is more of a convoluted mess with a group of five teams and then Kansas at the very bottom. There is a lot to work through.
Sooners Wire provides the best and worst-case scenarios for every Big 12 team in 2021: