Useful Notes / Big 12 Conference Football Programs

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Arizona Wildcats

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The University of Arizona ("Zona" for short) followed its intrastate rival Arizona State from the Western Athetic Conference (of which they were both charter members alongside fellow current Big 12 schools BYU and Utah) to the Pac-12 in 1978. While fairly well renowned as a basketball school, its football team has mostly just existed in Tucson. Their 1987 season may well have been the most mediocre campaign in college football history: 4 wins, 4 losses, 3 ties.^note Besides the three ties, they had a 1-point loss to Iowa and a 2-point loss to USC, meaning they were 8 points away from a 9-2 record. Their greatest success came in the 1990s; led by the dominating "Desert Swarm" defense of coach Dick Tomey, they won a share of the Pac-10 title in 1993 and earned a higher ranking than conference winner UCLA in 1997 by winning more games. However, the team cratered after Tomey's departure and has generally underachieved since despite a succession of high-profile coaches and some notable players. The Wildcats' performance truly cratered in 2020, where they went winless in the COVID-shortened season and won just one in the following year. They've moderately improved since, but it remains to be seen how they'll perform after making the move to the Big 12 in 2024.

The Wildcats' intrastate rivalry with Arizona State is one of the oldest in college football, with their Territorial Cup being the oldest rivalry trophy in the sport, being first awarded in 1899 (though there's a technicality there; it hasn't actually been awarded for most of the rivalry's history, only being renewed in the 21st century). Interestingly enough, despite Arizona State having a much stronger overall football history than Arizona, the Wildcats narrowly lead in this long series due to dominating in the early 20th century. With Zona and ASU joining the Big 12, the rivalry continues in that conference, and is one of only four conference rivalries guaranteed to be played every year.^note The others: Baylor–TCU, BYU–Utah, and Kansas–Kansas State.

Arizona State Sun Devils

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Arizona State University was basically the Boise State of the mid-20th century—the Western school that dominated its lower-profile conference on the road to becoming a national power. While a fairly weak football program in the early 20th century, future coaching great Dan Devine led them to an undefeated season in 1957. Frank Kush took over and had even greater success, with two undefeated records in '70 and '75, the latter season ending with a #2 final ranking. This success led the Pac-8 to come calling for ASU (and its rival Arizona in a package deal), with both joining the conference in 1978. However, Kush, a Drill Sergeant Nasty who took full advantage of the desert sun as discipline, was fired in the middle of the '79 season after a scandal emerged over his harsh treatment of his players, including a lawsuit from a former punter who accused Kush of punching him in the mouth during a game.

Arizona State was the first of the newcomers to win a Pac-10 title and make the Rose Bowl, reaching those heights in 1986 and catapulting John Cooper to his Ohio State gig; a decade later, his Buckeyes would narrowly block the Sun Devils from winning the Rose Bowl, costing them a perfect season and a likely national championship. However, in recent decades, having to compete against the conference's other powers and the arrival of the NFL's Cardinals into the Phoenix market (they shared the school's stadium for 18 years, one of the longer co-tenancies of any pro and college football programs) helped diminish the program's prominence and performance. ASU followed its instate rival Arizona to the Big 12 in 2024; though it was more or less dragged there kicking and screaming, it won the entire conference in its first year under the leadership of 34-year-old HC Kenny Dillingham.

The school itself is also of note as having the largest residential and total enrollments of any FBS member... with some major caveats.^note ASU actually consists of four physical campuses scattered around the Phoenix area, plus a large online operation. The main campus in Tempe has an enrollment of about 58K, with another 20K-plus attending the other Phoenix-area campuses, taking ASU past Texas A&M as the largest residential school in FBS. The online operation adds another 60K-plus, taking ASU past Liberty (16K residential, over 100K online) as the largest overall university in FBS. Also worth mentioning are the Sun Devils' ice hockey team, being the southernmost and westernmost Division I program in the Lower 48.^note Including all fifty states, ASU loses that latter title to the Alaska Nanooks in Fairbanks and the Alaska Anchorage Seawolves. Notably, ASU's hockey home of Mullett Arena also hosted the Arizona Coyotes during their final years before their 2024 folding and relocation to Salt Lake City. The school's mascot, a classical devil with a pitchfork named "Sparky", hypes up the crowd before games with a video of him stomping on the other team's bus. Mountain America Stadium (Sun Devil Stadium behind the corporate name), located on top of a hill overlooking the main campus, is pretty notorious for being (forgive the pun) hot as hell.

Baylor Bears

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A conservative Baptist school, Baylor University is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas (founded before the state officially joined the U.S. and starting out in the small town of Independence before moving to Waco in the 1880s). The football team enjoyed some success in the first quarter of the 20th century but then fell into a period of mediocrity. This finally ended with a 1974 Southwest Conference title so improbable that even today, Baylor fans call it the "Miracle on the Brazos". After another major lull in the late 1990s and 2000s, they made a major national splash under Art Briles in 2011 thanks to electric Heisman-winning QB Robert Griffin III during a period of massive sports success that greatly raised the regional school's profile; during the 2011-12 "Year of the Bear", all four of its major programs (football, baseball, men's/women's basketball) finished their season ranked and compiled the best shared win percentage of any school in NCAA history. That period also saw the Bears open their new McLane Stadium, the joint newest in the Power Four,^note For now; that distinction will pass to Northwestern's new Ryan Field when it opens in 2026. Houston's Space City Financial Stadium also opened in 2014, though the first game at that venue was two days before Baylor's first in its current stadium. on the banks of the Brazos River. One of three FBS stadiums directly accessible by boat,^note Two other FBS stadiums are directly on navigable rivers, but don't really count. The Pittsburgh Steelers' Acrisure Stadium, also home to Pitt, is at the head of the Ohio River and has a boat ramp next to it but lacks docking facilities. Army's Michie Stadium is directly on the Hudson River, with an outdoor riverfront plaza, but has no boat facilities for security reasons. its 2014 opening marked the first time since 1935 that the Bears played on campus. However, there was a dark side to this success—Briles and the Baylor administration were caught covering up a massive string of sexual assaults by players, leading to a housecleaning of not only the football program but also the top administration. Coach Matt Rhule's swift turnaround of the program's on- and off-field reputation earned him an (ultimately disappointing) NFL gig, and after another brief rebuild, the program has remained competitive since.

Baylor nowadays is probably best known as one of the powerhouses of NCAA women's basketball; the Bears (who didn't drop "Lady" from their nickname until 2021–22) pretty much ruled Big 12 basketball in the 21st century under coach Kim Mulkey (2000–21), including winning three national titles and posting a perfect 40-0 season during The Year of the Bear. Men's basketball added a national title of its own in 2021, a highlight in a program that has been historically associated with tragedies.^note Most notably a catastrophic 1927 bus accident that resulted in the deaths of ten players and the 2003 murder of one player by a former teammate, with the investigation of that crime leading to the uncovering of massive NCAA rules violations that resulted in mass firings and NCAA sanctions; yes, that has been a grim trend at Baylor for many years. Football is regardless a very important part of campus culture; all freshmen participate in the "Baylor Line" that welcomes the team on-field in home games and sits behind opposing teams to heckle them. The school keeps two real black bears, Joy and Lady, as mascots in an on-campus enclosure.

BYU Cougars

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Brigham Young University is the second FBS member to have been founded by early Mormon leader Brigham Young,^note Read further down for the first. though it wouldn't actually be absorbed by the LDS Church until 1896. BYU had done little in football before LaVell Edwards, who had arrived at "The Y" as an assistant in 1962, was elevated to the head coaching position in 1972. A major contribution to this turn in football fortunes was the LDS Church disavowing its former anti-Black doctrines and practices in 1978, aiding the Cougars' recruiting; BYU did not admit Black students at all through the 1960s, far after most universities outside of the South, and its team accepted its first Black players in Edwards' first season, making it among the last programs to integrate. Edwards installed a high-powered passing offense that brought the Cougars quick success, helping them claim a national title in 1984 and produce a Heisman winner in Ty Detmer in 1990; they remain the last non-major school to win that latter award. BYU in this era became known as "Quarterback U"; under Edwards, nine BYU quarterbacks led the NCAA in either passing yards, touchdowns, or rating, more than any other program in college football history. Since Edwards' retirement after 2000, BYU has remained a generally winning program, though not quite at its 1980s heights.

BYU is well-known for taking its faith very seriously. The school has a strict honor code that reflects its church's doctrine, and every so often a player will get suspended or dismissed for a violation. Many of its players are also a bit older than typical college athletes due to being returned Mormon missionaries; the LDS Church strongly encourages its young men to spend two years as such, with most doing so immediately after high school graduation.^*Before the church lowered the required age for male missionaries from 19 to 18 in the early 2010s, most had to interrupt their college education; the NCAA has long held that missionary service does not count against an athlete's college eligibility. BYU's heavy use of returned missionaries has drawn minor criticism, but because they are not allowed to engage in athletic training during their terms and have minimal time for intense physical activity, it's accepted that BYU gains no significant advantage. BYU also has a firm policy against Sunday play in any sport; while this generally doesn't affect football, it has dramatically affected other sports and caused headaches for scheduling of NCAA championship events. Though it bounced around a number of smaller conferences, BYU felt that it could make far more money as an independent with its built-in LDS following, following the model that Notre Dame established for Catholic fans, and set out on its own in 2011.^*The school then placed most of its non-football sports in the West Coast Conference, which doesn't play football and consists entirely of private faith-based schools that don't schedule any in-conference sporting events on Sunday. Nonetheless, a power conference slot remained a goal for BYU, which it finally reached when it joined the Big 12 in 2023. The Big 12 allowed BYU to maintain its no-Sunday policy; perhaps not coincidentally, it has two other faith-based members (Baylor and TCU, though both will play on Sundays).

Cincinnati Bearcats

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The University of Cincinnati is primarily known as a basketball school (with back-to-back national titles in the early '60s) and has had an up-and-down history in football. Its historic high peak was serving as Sid Gillman's final college coaching stop before the launch of his pro career. After many years of under achieving and bouncing around second-tier conferences (including being a founding member of CUSA), UC joined the Big East in 2005 and soon surged to national prominence under Brian Kelly in the late 2000s, coming a second away from qualifying for the National Championship game in 2009^note Had Texas lost a controversial Big 12 championship game where the referees gave them extra time for a game-winning field goal, unbeaten Cincinnati would have leapfrogged them into the title game instead. (helping him land his position at Notre Dame). Under coach Luke Fickell, the school became one of the most esteemed non-Power Five programs, and became the only Group of Five program to reach the four-team CFP in 2021 (even if they were quickly bested by Alabama). They wouldn't be Group of Five for long, though, as they took a spot in the Big 12 in 2023, once again making Ohio a state with two power conference programs in football (Ohio State of the Big Ten is the other).

UC has a fairly close professional relationship with its city's pro team, the Bengals. The Bengals long used UC's indoor practice facilities and played their first few seasons in the school's historic Nippert Stadium. (They have returned the favor by letting the Bearcats play in their own stadium during renovations or major games.) Nippert is one of the oldest venues in college sports. The stands were officially dedicated in 1924, but the field has been in use since at least 1915. It is named after Jimmy Nippert, a UC player who died from blood poisoning in 1923 after a spike wound sustained during a game became infected, most likely from droppings left on the field from a chicken race earlier in the day; his grandfather was a co-founder of Procter & Gamble and paid to have his grandson honored in the name.

Colorado Buffaloes

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The University of Colorado Boulder (the flagship campus of the state's university system, locally abbreviated as "CU") is unsurprisingly home to a powerhouse skiing program, being located in the hub of the sports' popularity (the school has 19 national titles in men's/co-ed skiing). Its other sports have not been as successful,^note though 1960s DB Hale Irwin won an individual NCAA golf title that proved to be the launching pad for his Hall of Fame career in that sport but football has had some moments of prominence. The Colorado football program was a regional power in the late 19th/early 20th century, most famously as the home of All-American fullback (and future Supreme Court justice) Byron "Whizzer" White. Their dominance in the Rockies led to an invite to what would eventually become the Big Eight, but the football program slipped into mediocrity as Oklahoma and Nebraska dominated the conference. Bill Mallory led them to a share of the conference title and an appearance in the Orange Bowl in 1976, but was fired two years later after pushing back against meddling by the athletic department and boosters. The hiring of NFL coach Chuck Fairbanks to replace him in 1979 proved an unmitigated disaster, as the team cratered under his tenure (7 wins in three years) and became a laughing stock. Thankfully, his successor Bill McCartney elevated the program to its greatest heights, peaking in 1990 with an 11-1-1 record and a share of the national championship; the coaches' poll went with Georgia Tech instead, partly due to the Buffs' controversial "fifth down" win against Missouri.^{more detail}Colorado, down 31–27 and driving late in the 4th quarter, mistakenly got two second downs on their final drive due to officials forgetting to flip the marker from second to third down and not realizing the error at first, and the Buffs scored the winning TD with a quarterback sneak on the game's final play, on a fourth down that was really the fifth down of the series. Not only that, there was some question whether QB Charles Johnson had actually crossed the goal line, and detractors felt that, despite being a 33–31 Colorado win, the game was a de facto second loss that took the Buffs out of national title contention. They also produced a Heisman winner in RB Rashaan Salaam in 1994.

McCartney retired after Salaam's Heisman win to focus on Promise Keepers, his Christian ministry organization, and the team receded from national prominence after that. The Buffaloes could have become the first FBS team ever to field a woman, but placekicker Katie Hnida^*(The "H" is silent.), though making the team and suiting up for a bowl game, never saw the field. Hnida would later report after leaving the school that she had been sexually assaulted by a teammate, one of many controversies that forced the school to fire head coach Gary Barnett and incur several sanctions; the Buffaloes subsequently endured a decade of losing seasons and still have yet to return to their former success. In the midst of this decline, when the Pac-10 tried to swipe up half of the Big 12 in 2010, Colorado was the only school to actually follow through and make the leap. The move didn't last long: Colorado returned to the Big 12 in 2024, now coached by Deion Sanders, whose Hall of Fame playing résumé and larger-than-life persona greatly elevated the program's profile, with the Buffs' Big 12 return coinciding with Travis Hunter's historic two-way season that brought CU its second Heisman. However, this hasn't exactly translated into much more winning on the field for the Buffs.

Colorado's stadium, Folsom Field (named for an early coach who led the team to three straight undefeated seasons in 1909-11), is one of the most picturesque in the nation, located right up against the Rocky Mountains and using the unique "Tuscan Vernacular Revival" architecture of the surrounding campus. Folsom has the highest elevation of any Power Four stadium and the third-highest of any in the FBS behind Wyoming and Air Force. The program has strong in-state rivalries with the latter school and with Colorado State. Since adopting the "Buffalo" name in 1934 (prior teams were the "Silver Helmets" or "Frontiersmen"), the school has run an actual buffalo (i.e., bison) named Ralphie along the sidelines of said field. They were often called the Golden Buffaloes or the Thundering Herd in past decades, but those names have largely disappeared.

Houston Cougars

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The University of Houston is one of the largest public universities in Texas, and has a storied athletic program, though it got a rather late start compared to the likes of Texas and Texas A&M, only beginning after after World War II. It is most highly decorated in for its golf program, which won an NCAA record 16 national titles from the 1950s-'80s^*and, for a season in the late '70s, featured future sportscasting icon Jim Nantz, and is also known for its successful basketball program, best known for its "Phi Slama Jama" teams of the early '80s that produced Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon, Hall of Famers who later brought their college town two NBA titles. The football program began in 1946 as a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits culled together from open tryouts among the student body, with a stadium borrowed from a local high school district and a nickname borrowed from Washington State.^explanationIn the late 1920s, long before the start of intercollegiate athletics, former Washington State HC John Bender was a PE instructor at the school and coached a club team, and adopted the Cougar as a mascot in honor of his old school. It became popular enough among the campus community that the school newspaper chose the name The Cougar when it was founded in 1934, so the nickname was already an entrenched part of UH's culture by the time they began varsity competition. Eventually UH developed a reputation as the point of origin for multiple innovative offenses that also generated multiple NCAA record-breaking quarterbacks. Coach Bill Yeoman used his innovative Veer option offense to take the team from a middling independent to a powerhouse of the Southwest during his quarter-century as head coach (1962-86), including a record-setting 100-6 blowout of Tulsa in 1968, only to be fired from the program he helped build due to recruitment violations that essentially amounted to paying players.

Despite the sanctions Yeoman incurred, successor Jack Pardee kept the Cougars successful on the field through his innovative Run N' Shoot offense, which helped Andre Ware smash NCAA passing records in 1989 and win the Heisman. However, said sanctions also included a TV ban that ensured almost nobody actually saw many of these games, and Pardee was quickly poached by Houston's Oilers (which got their start playing in the university's stadium). The school continued its reputation for prolific passing numbers when David Klingler set many records of his own the following year, but his and Ware's failures at the pro level led to their accomplishments being credited to Houston's system and poor competition. After the team spent a decade as a bottom-feeder, QB Case Keenum helped revive their prospects while shattering many NCAA career passing records during his long tenure as starter (2007-11).

Houston's late arrival to the SWC, history with sanctions, and peaks and valleys during its time in the weak CUSA have largely excluded it from consideration as one of Texas' premier programs. However, as an urban school located in one of Texas's biggest metro areas, donors have pushed hard for years to get the program up to the next level. Most notable among these is Houston Rockets owner and UH alum Tilman Fertitta, whose name graces the Cougars' basketball arena and has made UH a recent example of a billionaire alum's pet program, following in the tradition set by charter Big 12 member Oklahoma State and recent Big Ten arrival Oregon (with other schools, including another Big 12 member in Texas Tech, also employing this model). It just missed joining the Big East before that conference collapsed, and Houston had to settle for the American despite the school investing millions into building a new stadium to prep for the leap.^note Despite having a stadium built right on-campus from the school's inception, it was fairly small and not actually owned by the university until 1970; the team shared the venue of hated crosstown rival Rice in the '50s and early '60s and then spent more than 30 years in the famous Astrodome, though it left that venue in the late '90s when the dome became obsolete. They even cohabited with the Houston Dynamo of Major League Soccer for a few years. Said on-campus stadium was demolished in 2012 to make way for the current one, which opened in 2014. All those years of campaigning finally paid off when the impending departure of Oklahoma and Texas for the SEC enabled UH's promotion to the Big 12 for 2023.

Iowa State Cyclones

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Iowa State University of Science and Technology's football program was one of the early stops for Pop Warner and had some success in the late 19th/early 20th century. However, it has largely been a bottom feeder ever since, sitting in the shadow of its intrastate rival Iowa (which it shared a conference with for precisely two seasons in the very early 20th century) and having not even won a conference title in well over a century. Like the Hawkeyes, the Cyclones are much better known for their wrestling program, which has won eight national championships and produced Cael Sanderson, commonly held up as the greatest American college wrestler ever. The football team returned to relevance in the late 2010s under coach Matt Campbell, who strung together more consecutive winning seasons than the Cyclones had seen in over a century, including the program's first ever double-digit win season in 2024.

During Warner's brief tenure at the school in 1895, Iowa State's athletic programs were renamed from their old cardinal nickname to one referencing the natural disasters common to the Iowa area. Since it's hard to make a tornado costume, their official mascot remains a cardinal (named "Cy"). Their home venue of Jack Trice Stadium is the sole FBS venue named after an African American, though there is a tragic reason for that; Trice was the school's first Black player, but he was trampled to death in 1923 during his second game, which resulted in Iowa State not playing Minnesota for over 60 years.

Kansas Jayhawks

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The University of Kansas (locally abbreviated "KU") is best known for its historic and prestigious men's basketball program, which was founded by basketball inventor James Naismith himself^note ironically, he was the only men's basketball coach to end his KU tenure with a losing record, produced Wilt Chamberlain, and holds numerous records and honors (including the second-most wins,^note Before being forced by the NCAA to vacate 15 wins from its 2017–18 season due to fielding an ineligible player, it had the most wins. third-highest lifetime win percentage, four national titles, and the most conference titles of any program). Its football program is much less esteemed, though it is historic in the sense that it is the only original member of the MVIAA to still be in the Big 12. The Jayhawks have been pretty bad pretty much since that conference dissolved in the 1920s, including a winless 1954 season. One measure of their football futility is the odd fact they're the only Power 4 program who's never had an HC last at least a decade on the job; Glen Mason's 9 years in Lawrence (1988-96) mark the longest Jayhawk coaching tenure. The team had an anomalous breakout year in 2007 under HC Mark Mangino, coming within a game of winning their sole conference championship in half a decade. They fell very hard back to earth quickly after, reclaiming their Butt-Monkey status with a vengeance. From 2010-2021, the "Nayhawks" failed to post more than three wins in a season, going completely winless in 2015 and 2020. However, the arrival of current coach Lance Leipold after the 2020 disaster immediately turned things around. In 2022, the Jayhawks surpassed their best win count in over a decade just to start their season and made it to bowl eligibility; they posted their first winning record since 2008 the next year.

The "Jayhawk" name does not refer to a real animal; it is a reference to the "Jayhawkers" who violently resisted the encroachment of slavery during Kansas's time as a territory in the late 1850s (but their mascot/logo is still a cartoon bird). This history is reflected in the school's most heated historic rivalry with Missouri (where most of the slavers came from), though that has largely gone dormant since Missouri left the conference, leaving the intrastate rivalry with Kansas State to fill the void.

Kansas State Wildcats

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For decades, Kansas State University's football program was the absolute worst in Division I-A football, having put up five winless seasons against just four winning ones in the half-century before the hiring of Bill Snyder in 1989; that included a period of 28 straight losses from 1945-48, a then-record in futility that has only been surpassed by one D-I school (Northwestern) in the decades since. In one of the most remarkable turnarounds in college football, Snyder transformed the Wildcats into contenders during his 27 (nonconsecutive) seasons as head coach. Despite seeing general success while a member of the Big 12, the team's historic win record is still the worst in the conference, and the school is one of only two Power Four colleges to have never won a national championship in any team sport.^note Not counting Pitt or UCF; neither has won an NCAA-awarded team title, but both claim at least one football natty, and Pitt also claims two pre-NCAA men's basketball titles. The school's struggles to get over the hump led to "The Kansas State Rule": in 1998, the Wildcats remained at #3 in the BCS rankings after a heartbreaking double-overtime loss to Texas A&M in the Big 12 Championship Game (costing them a spot in the National Championship Game) but they were snubbed for an at-large bid to one of the other BCS bowls in favor of #8 Florida and #9 Wisconsin. The very next year, a rule was put in place that if a team from an automatic qualifying conference finished at #3 but did not win their conference, they would have to be given an at-large bid before any team ranked #4 or lower could^note If the #3 team was a conference champion, the same would apply to the #4 team. This failed to help the Wildcats, however, who in 1999 wound up at #6 and again were snubbed in favor of highly prestigious #8 Michigan. K-State has stayed contenders in their conference through most of the 21st century, helping the current generation to largely forget just how bad the school once was.

K-State renamed its stadium after Snyder following his first retirement in 2005. The venue is one of the more visually distinctive in college football, with limestone battlements resembling a castle. The Wildcats' logo is known as the "Powercat", while their actual mascot "Willie the Wildcat" is best known for donning a leather jacket and leading a procession of bikers around the field on the school's annual "Harley Day". K-State has strong rivalries with fellow long-suffering Great Plains programs Kansas and Iowa State; it used to have a strong one against Nebraska as well before the Cornhuskers switched conferences.

Oklahoma State Cowboys

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While its football program is Always Second Best to its dominant intrastate rival, Oklahoma State University-Stillwater actually claims the most national athletic titles of any school outside of California (a distant fourth to Stanford, UCLA, and USC) thanks to its wrestling program, which has won 34 championships (the majority of them pre-1970), and golf, which has won 11. On the football field, the Cowboys (known as the "Aggies" or "Tigers" pre-1958, when the school was called Oklahoma A&M, and more colloquially known today as the "Pokes") have fluctuated massively in strength. The program was retroactively awarded a national title for its undefeated 1945 season, but it collapsed to a losing record the following year. In 1951, the Cowboys had a serious "never live it down" episode when one of their players deliberately injured Drake's African-American star Johnny Bright in what most concluded was a racially motivated attack. After going under .500 through the '60s, the team began to recover, culminating in the production of its sole Heisman winner, legendary RB Barry Sanders, in 1988. Unfortunately, Sanders' departure coincided with a host of sanctions that again cratered the program's win record. Thankfully, the hiring of former star QB Mike Gundy in 2005 as head coach set the school on the longest run of sustained success in its history, including a one-loss 2011 season that saw them narrowly missing out on a national championship selection (though they were recognized as national champs by the Colley Matrix). However, Gundy's reticence to adapt to the NIL era led to the Pokes cratering in 2024, and Gundy was shown the door early in 2025 after a home loss to Tulsa (which wasn't even a good team in its conference that year) showed just how far the program's recruiting had fallen off.

OK State's athletic program is also notable for being a pet project of a billionaire alum—in this case, late energy investor and football stadium namesake T. Boone Pickens, who funded the expansion of the stadium and many other OSU projects, both athletic and academic, to the tune of over $1 billion. The prominence of the school's wrestling program is reflected in the position of its arena (also used by the basketball teams) right behind the eastern end zone of the U-shaped Boone. Diehard Poke fans known as "paddle people" sit in the front rows of said stadium and make noise by smacking the sideline wall with giant orange paddles.

TCU Horned Frogs

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The first coeducational college in Texas, Texas Christian University leaped into football prominence in the 1930s as one of the first teams to make passing the cornerstone of its offense. Sammy Baugh was one of the game's first star passers, and his successor Davey O'Brien was the first QB to win the Heisman Trophy, as he led TCU to an undefeated 1938 season and the second of two national titles in that decade. However, its status as a smaller private school among the state-run behemoths in the Southwest Conference finally caught up with them, and the Horned Frogs were generally terrible in the '60s through the '90s. After head coach Jim Pittman died on the sideline in 1971, they failed to post a winning season from 1972-83, received NCAA sanctions for player benefits (along with virtually every other SWC school) immediately after breaking that streak (though the NCAA gave them lighter treatment for self-reporting the violations), and ultimately were left behind when the SWC merged with the Big Eight to form the Big 12. Another possible reason for being left behind is that even today, it's one of only two Power Four schools that aren't classified by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education as R1 (denoting universities with the highest levels of research spending and doctorate production), instead being designated as R2.^note The other is Wake Forest. Before 2025, fellow Big 12 member BYU and ACC member SMU were also R2.

However, HC Dennis Franchione (and dominant Heisman finalist LaDainian Tomlinson) began to turn things around in the late 1990s, and when Gary Patterson took over in 2000, TCU turned into a full feel-good revival in the 21st century, climbing up the ranks of FBS conferences and serving as a regular BCS Buster. An undefeated season in 2010 helped them finally gain entry to the Big 12 (which is headquartered in nearby Irving) in 2012 (in the process reversing an earlier acceptance of an invitation to join the Big East Conference, which soon fell apart), and the program was even on the cusp of an appearance in the first CFP in 2014 before the committee unexpectedly dropped them out of the Top 4. Patterson was fired during the 2021 season after a slide to mediocrity, but TCU immediately jumped back to contention the following year with an undefeated regular season. Though the Frogs crashed out in overtime of the Big 12 title game, their performance was still sufficient to earn the school its first CFP appearance and to become the first Big 12 team to reach the CFP National Championship game, making them by most metrics the biggest dark horse to make it that far in the modern era (though they ultimately got historically blown out by Georgia 65-7).

The school maintains strong rivalries with its fellow Texas schools, with perhaps the most notable being the "Iron Skillet" matchup with SMU (named after the tool used by one SMU fan to cook some frog legs in a memorable pregame). For what it's worth, the university's unique mascot is not a frog; it's the state lizard of Texas. In recent years, said mascot has received another nickname: the Hypnotoad.

Texas Tech Red Raiders

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Texas Tech University was long considered a junior sibling to Texas and Texas A&M among the state-run Texas schools. Efforts to lure Texas to the Big Ten or Pac-10 in 2010 were considered hobbled by the perception that any expansion scenario involving the Longhorns would require them to also admit the much less desirable Tech, which has never finished in the AP Poll's Top 10 and is one of the most geographically isolated Power 4 schools.^note No FBS member on the US mainland is farther away from its nearest FBS neighbor than Tech (in its case, North Texas). However, the most isolated P4 school from its nearest P4 neighbor is Colorado. Even still, the Red Raiders have managed to carve out a solid if not spectacular football legacy. The arrival of HC Mike Leach in 2000 jump-started a period of great success, with his pass-heavy Air Raid offense helping his quarterbacks shatter all kinds of records even while many football observers derided them as marginally-talented "system QBs". One of those QBs, Kliff Kingsbury, later took over as HC in 2013, only to be cut loose after six unspectacular seasons most notable for producing Patrick Mahomes, who proved to be much more than a system QB in the pros.

In the current NIL era, Tech has raised eyebrows with its extreme spending, not just in football,^note The biggest eyebrow-raiser came in softball, in which Tech spent seven figures to lure All-America pitcher NiJaree Canady from Stanford after the 2024 season, followed by Tech making the 2025 Women's College World Series championship series. And then forking over another seven-figure sum to keep her in Lubbock in 2026, followed by a second trip to the WCWS championship series. with the initiative led by billionaire energy investor and former Tech OL Cody Campbell (with Mahomes chipping in some of his own fortune and image as well). This spending, combined with the departure of its big sibling schools to the SEC, transformed the Raiders into a legitimate conference power. 2025 was the best season in program history by numerous marks, featuring the most wins, first Big 12 title, and first unshared conference title in 70 years.

Prior to adopting the "Red Raiders" moniker in 1937, the team were known as the Matadors, reflecting the Spanish Renaissance architecture that distinguishes the Texas Tech campus and stadium. The team and its fans now embrace cowboy imagery, with a Masked Rider mascot and a signature Finger Gun hand gesture.

UCF Knights

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While the University of Central Florida is one of the newer D-I schools by founding date and start of football and is currently the youngest school in the Power 4, it has grown at a tremendous pace and is now just behind Texas A&M for the largest undergraduate enrollment of any single university campus in the country (close to 60,000—and for a few years in the late '10s–early '20s, UCF had the lead).^note While Big 12 member Arizona State and Conference USA member Liberty have considerably larger total enrollments than either UCF or A&M, it's only because of both schools' online operations (ASU's being large, and LU's being absolutely massive). The distinction of most on-campus students belongs to ASU, but its enrollment is split between four Phoenix-area campuses; the main campus in Tempe has fewer total students than UCF has undergrads. The Knights football program had a momentous ascent from their first season in D-III in 1979, becoming the first football program to play at all four current levels of NCAA competition (James Madison became the second in 2022), and the only current Power 4 school to have previously played non-scholarship football in the modern history of the NCAA's divisional structure (D-III does not allow athletic scholarships at all). Three years later, UCF moved to D-II, and later managed to lure former NFL coach Lou Saban, though he enjoyed far less success than in the pros, stepping down in the middle of his second season. The university nearly dropped football, but it became successful in D-II in the last half of the '80s and took the jump to Division I-AA (now FCS) in 1990. In the then-Golden Knights' first I-AA season, they became the first team ever to qualify for the I-AA/FCS playoffs in their first season of eligibility and enjoyed reasonable success until making the jump to I-A/FBS in 1996. After modest success as an independent and a decline in the early 2000s as a football-only member of the MAC, the program was reinvigorated by the arrival of HC George O'Leary in 2004. While the Knights went winless in their last MAC season, they turned things around upon joining CUSA in 2005, winning two conference titles and playing for two others. O'Leary also oversaw UCF's move to The American in 2013, where it won conference titles in its first two seasons. However, his tenure ended in 2015 as it began—with a winless season.

Scott Frost quickly righted the ship, making a bowl in his first season alongside program-redefining freshman QB McKenzie Milton. 2017 saw Milton set multiple school records while leading the Knights to an unbeaten season, finishing it off in the Peach Bowl by beating an Auburn team that had laid double-digit defeats on both participants in that year's CFP title game (Alabama and Georgia). The program claimed a national title on the basis of a single computer ranking, with Bama the consensus champion; Floridians were so incensed that the school was not even given the opportunity to fight for the title in the Playoff that the state legislature passed a resolution recognizing it. The following year, with Frost gone to Nebraska and Josh Heupel replacing him, UCF again went unbeaten until losing to LSU in the Fiesta Bowl, having lost Milton to a catastrophic knee injury in its final regular-season game. This Group of Five success bore fruit when Knights joined the Big 12 in 2023; after struggling with the transition, Frost returned to the school in '24.

UCF was known as the "Golden Knights" before 2007; before that, the team had been known as the "Knights of the Pegasus", and before that (indeed, before the football program was founded) the mascot was briefly "The Citronaut"◊, an anthropomorphic orange that was also an astronaut (basically '60s Central Florida in a nutshell). The football team plays in one of the most uniquely named stadiums in college football, the Bounce House.^note The "Bounce House" nickname was actually gleaned off its original corporate naming rights deal with cable provider Bright House Networks, now part of Spectrum (the brand name of Charter Communications). That deal lapsed after the 2019 season. After playing in the off-campus Citrus Bowl for several decades, the university built a more modern facility on-campus in 2007. Unfortunately, the stadium wasn't exactly up to snuff; in addition to lacking water fountains on opening day (a code violation and a major problem in the Florida heat), the stadium noticeably shook when fans were on their feet, giving it the nickname that briefly became official when naming rights sponsorships dried up in 2020, and became official once again in 2025, though now with a sponsor's name attached (of note, the stadium now shakes much less—and has water—after renovations). Despite its relatively small size, UCF's stadium has arguably one of the best home-field advantages in the sport, with frequent sellout crowds that deafen visiting offenses. UCF's primary rival is USF (South Florida), down the road in Tampa, though as of 2022 it's on ice (at least temporarily) since USF was left in the American. UConn tried to form a rivalry with UCF called the "Civil ConFLiCT" when both were in The American; UCF disavowed the "rivalry", and it essentially died when UConn left the conference after 2019.

Utah Utes

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The University of Utah is one of two FBS universities founded by early Mormon leader Brigham Young and the other school known to its students and fans as "The U", complete with a hand signal very similar to Miami's.^note There's documented evidence of Utah being called "The U" well before the University of Miami's 1925 founding, but the hand signal was, ahem, "borrowed" from Miami starting around 1997. Utah was a regional football power for much of its history, with some dominant years in the 1920s and '30s under the long tenure of Hall of Fame coach Ike Armstrong (1925-49). The Utes were inconsistent after his departure and regressed in the '70s with the rise of BYU hurting them in recruiting. The program turned things around in the '90s and made a national splash in the 2000s, becoming the first "BCS Buster" in 2004 under HC Urban Meyer and star QB Alex Smith and becoming the first two-time BCS Buster in 2008 under the two-decade tenure of HC Kyle Whittingham, winning both bowl games on the way to undefeated seasons. Their nine-game bowl win streak from 1999-2009 is tied for the second-longest ever. They parlayed this success into an invitation from the former Pac-10 in 2011, eventually settling in there as a solid competitor. After the loss of two players to gun deaths before and during the 2021 season, the program retired its #22 in their honor and won the conference the next two seasons. The Utes joined their Four Corners compatriots in abandoning the Pac-12 in 2024. After a struggle in Year One in the Big 12, Whittingham brought the Utes back to winning in 2025 before moving on to take the job at Michigan.

The Utes are also known for their spicy rivalry with LDS Church-owned BYU (nicknamed "the Holy War"); they have similar but less extreme rivalries with Utah State and Colorado. After playing most of their history in Ute Stadium (renamed Robert L. Rice Stadium in the '70s after the main benefactor of a facility renovation), their home venue was almost completely demolished and rebuilt in 1998 so it could be used as the main stadium of the 2002 Winter Olympics (with the Eccles family, major benefactors for the university as a whole, getting their name added to the pre-existing "Rice" name). Like Florida State, Utah has explicit permission from a Native American tribe to use a tribal nickname, in its case the various Ute tribes, one of which (the Northern Ute, consisting of three bands) has its reservation in the state. The U (presumably) gained considerable goodwill from the Ute nation when it scrapped its "Redskins" nickname in 1972, well before most other schools with similar nicknames did so, and gained more when it dropped Native mascots. The Ute nation also signed off on the use of two feathers in the school's athletic logo (later dropped) and the school's current mascot, an anthropomorphic red-tailed hawk. Outside of football, the school is known for its strong programs in men's basketball, women's gymnastics (nine national championships in the '80s and '90s), and co-ed skiing (16 national titles). Its basketball arena is also historically notable as the site of the 1979 Final Four, whose championship game between Michigan State and Indiana State set a still-standing college basketball TV viewing record, and had a longer-lasting impact on the sport as the first matchup between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. The university is symbolized by a large concrete block "U" on a nearby hillside (built in 1907, inspired by similar hillside letters at UC Berkeley and BYU), which is visible throughout the Salt Lake Valley and is lit up whenever a Ute team wins a contest. One little-known bit of trivia related to Ute football is that the earliest known iteration of "three yards and a cloud of dust" to describe methodical run-based offenses was some derisive snarking by a BYU assistant about Utah's adoption of the Split T (the first option offense) ahead of their 1955 meeting, only his quote was "a cloud of dust and four yards". Utah would go on to win that game by a score of 41–9.

West Virginia Mountaineers

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Athletically, West Virginia University has enjoyed the most success in the niche sport of rifle—it's won 21 NCAA team titles—but its football program is quite strong and has had moments of national prominence. The school was able to attract some decent talent and coaches for decades, with notable runs of regional success in the 1920s (when it was the centerpiece of a regional conference) and '50s (when it joined the SoCon shortly before all its power schools left to form the ACC). However, the hiring of Don Nehlen as head coach in 1980 truly kickstarted the program. In his two decades as HC, Nehlen guided the team into joining the Big East and introduced the distinctive "Flying WV" helmet logo. A standout year was 1988, when the Mountaineers finished the regular season undefeated and played #1 Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl with the national championship on the line (Notre Dame won 34-21). This turned out to be a trend for the Nehlen-led program, which lost 9 of 13 bowl appearances. WVU partially shed this choking reputation in the 2000s when star QB Pat White took them to four straight bowl wins, which enabled it to be in the right place at the right time as the Big East imploded, finding a place in the Big 12.^*WVU's AD at the time, Oliver Luck (Andrew's father), was a graduate of UT's law school, providing him contacts with many Texas (and Big 12) power brokers. However, the Mountaineers failed to compete for a national title in 2007 thanks to an upset loss to nearby rival Pitt, and the school hasn't come close to that level of national relevance since, though it does still claim the most wins of any FBS program without a national championship.

As the highest-profile representative of a small rural state that lacks any pro teams, West Virginians are pretty diehard for the team in Morgantown (unless they're Marshall fans^note This in-state "rivalry" is not particularly strong, as the schools don't play each other anymore and the Herd never managed to beat the Mountaineers when they did; WVU has much fiercer (and competitive) rivalries with schools right across state lines, most notably Pitt.). When WVU fills its stadium, it becomes the largest "city" in the state by a healthy margin.^*As of the 2020 census, the population of the state capital of Charleston was about 49,000; Huntington (home to Marshall) was second at a hair less than 47K. Morgantown itself has around 30K.^note WVU has possibly the most fragmented campus in America due to its geography, with central campus on the other side of downtown from the other two. Shuttling students between the campuses created megacity-level gridlock, so a federally funded experimental light rail system was built in the 1970s to connect the campuses. Home games at the stadium echo with the sound of "Take Me Home, Country Roads"; John Denver himself performed the song at the dedication of the school's hilltop stadium in 1980. Reflecting the school's Appalachian heritage and success in rifle, games open with the Mountaineer mascot firing a rifle into the air. Another less positive WVU tradition is students burning couches after big wins (or big losses, big events, or no reason at all), which dates to the mid-1970s and has since spread to several other schools. That practice has lessened somewhat in recent years, thanks to a city ban on upholstered outdoor furniture and local authorities now prosecuting couch burning as felony arson.