Big 12 College Football Polls Drop: Media and Coaches Send a Loud Message for 2025

The preseason buzz just (more) got real. In this episode of First and 12, we break down the release of the (unofficially official) Big 12 Media Poll and the Coaches Poll for the 2025 Big 12 Championship Game. Who's being overrated? Who's flying under the radar? And what do these rankings really say about how insiders view the Big 12 race?

From surprise top picks to major snubs, we dive into what the voters got right — and what they absolutely missed. If you're a fan of bold predictions, honest reactions, and some serious Big 12 insight, this episode is for you.

Keywords

• Big 12 media poll 2025
• Big 12 coaches poll
• Big 12 Championship predictions
• college football preseason rankings
• Big 12 football 2025
• First and 12 podcast
• Big 12 power rankings
• Big 12 media days recap
• College football podcast

Transcript

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The official... unofficial? Big 12 media pull is out. Where did teams land? We're gonna talk about that and much more on today's episode. From all over home, the state to Colorado, Arizona State to Cincinnati. We've got Big 12 covered from end zone to buzzer beater. This is Verse 12. Draw at us past to all 16 teams. All in every episode.(upbeat music) Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Verse 12. I'm your host Adam Gibby. Happy Friday. We've made it through another full week. Hope everybody has a great weekend. We're gonna talk about two things today. And I thought today would be more of a fun show. We've had a lot of information come out with Big 12 media days this week. And there's been some announcements. There's been some narrative sort of talked about. And I thought it would be good to have a fun show where we talk about the media pull. Now, if you've listened to my other podcast or if you've been staying up with what's going on in the Big 12 conference, you probably know that the media pull is... It didn't happen this year. The Big 12 decided as a collective group that they weren't gonna do a media pull and the reason being is that they felt that last year, it was a disadvantage to teams like Arizona State, BYU, Iowa State. And it also just kind of hurt the brand overall, the Big 12 when teams like Oklahoma State and Utah, who were expected to be the top two teams, just fell in their face and then have the best season and didn't make a bull game. What that did is it gave this narrative or this filler on the conference of the top two teams aren't very good. And the worst teams are really are the best. So where does that really leave us as a conference? Does that mean our conference is any good at all? And obviously the answer is yes. We saw that with Arizona State taking Texas down to double over time. We saw that with BYU having a phenomenal run and only slipping up really once against Kansas. I'm not gonna count the Arizona State game because those were two great teams playing each other. Colorado had the high-spin trophy winner. Iowa State had one of the more exciting defenses and they bringing that back this year. And so basically what I'm getting at is it was a great conference last year, but because there were these narratives and there was this thought of these teams will be the best, these teams will be the worst based off of this media pull. It really did hurt the conference. So you may be asking why am I talking about a media pull then? Well, a couple of reasons. One, I voted in it and two, because I think it does give a good idea of where the media believes that the conference is as a whole. So this media pull was compiled of different media members within the conference. You had representatives from each team. You had somebody represented BYUs, somebody who represented Cincinnati, Kansas, Kansas State, Texas Tech, et cetera, et cetera. And then you also had some members of the media who represent college football in general, as well as the big 12. So for example, I myself released a poll and some other people who I'm not sure whether or not they want to be made public. So I'm going to respect that. But basically if you listen to any other big 12 conference podcast, they were part of the media. I'll just put it that way. And what ended up happening was, and I'll share my votes. And I think I'll show this on a show before. But my votes were number one, Baylor II Iowa State, three, Kansas State, four BYU, five, Texas Tech, six, Arizona State, seven, TCU, eight Houston, nine, Utah, coming in, number 10 was Kansas, followed by Colorado at 11. I had number 12 since in Addy, 13 Arizona, 14 Oklahoma State, 15 West Virginia, and 16 UCF. Now I'm going to give you a little bit of a breakdown as to where these teams ended up finishing, as far as total points go, just as sort of a general idea, the lower the number, the higher the ranking. And so just as an example, Kansas State ended up coming in first with 30 points. So they had the lowest number overall. In fact, the lowest anybody had them ranked was fifth overall. Following them, just behind them was Arizona State at 39. Now that is interesting because there is a bit of a gap there. There's a bit of a gap where it kind of seems like Kansas State is the, by far, the most popular choice. So I'll go over all the rankings. You've got, like I said, you have Kansas State first. Arizona State coming in number two, Baylor coming in at number three, Texas Tech is fourth. Iowa State is fifth. TCU comes in at six, Utah coming in at seven, BYU is number eight. Kansas is number nine. It's actually a tie between Kansas, Houston, Colorado. And this is kind of crazy because it's not like there's, again, only six people voting. They each received exactly 131 points. All three of them. And so yeah, that's pretty crazy that the totals of those three teams was all the same. Number 12 yet since Nadi 13, Oklahoma State, 14 West Virginia, 15 Arizona, and 16 UCF. I think that overall, this poll was a pretty good indication of where the media thinks they, a certain team are gonna go. I for one, had Baylor and Iowa State higher than the average, but everything else was more or less the same. They had TCU at six, I had them at seven. They, I had Houston at eight, the media had them at nine. Since Nadi was 12, I also agreed. West Virginia, 14, I had them at 15. The biggest difference was BYU who came in eighth overall where I had them at four. I think that a general idea is that if you lose your starting quarterback, the team's gonna drop significantly. I don't think that's the case. I happen to have a little bit more inside or knowledge perhaps than others that BYU didn't really rely on the quarterback last year. They just need a game manager. I'm not as worried or think they're going to fall as far as other teams seem to think other media members seem to think that they will. Like I said, not entirely sure where that's gonna land up. Now, obviously this is an unofficial poll. I think this is the most official poll we're gonna get. Again, this was a really good representation of the media within the big 12. I think any time you get more than 10, 15 media members coming together and voting, you're going to get a pretty good idea of where expectations are within the conference. Again, this is something fun. It's not official. I don't think this is gonna blow up to the point of becoming a national narrative. That's the whole point. We don't actually want this to become a national story, but we do want it to be something fun within the big 12 community, which if you are listening to this podcast, you're very likely a fan of the big 12 or at least very familiar with the big 12. I don't expect SEC Nation to run off with this. I don't expect big 10 Nation to run off of this or ESPN or anything like that. It's just a really fun idea that I'm glad happened and was able to be executed. Looking at the tweet right now, it has 43.6,000, so 43,600 impressions. It's been shared 30 times, bookmarked 13 times, and like 311 times. So that's pretty good for a post about college football in July 10th. And it does show me that it is being shared within the big 12 or fans within the big 12. So if you haven't checked that out, also follow Gamla Gouchos, regardless of who you follow, he's a fun follow. He's always got kind of clever, fun posts going on. He's definitely a Texas tech fan, but he's not what I would consider to be over the top or unrealistic. All right, on to segment two, the best fan base in the big 12. Now, if you haven't been following, I've been hosting this tournament over the past week and a half where we started off with 16 teams and we've had fans vote for who their favorite team is. And the championship came down to Texas Tech who was the three seed and BYU who was the four seed. At the time of recording, there is still a couple of hours left in the poll, but sort of like a presidential projection. I want to call the race. I don't have the exact numbers, the final numbers, but I can confidently say the 2025 best fan base in July are the BYU. BYU as of right now is holding a 79 to 21% lead. I don't think Texas Tech is going to be able to have a comeback. That's going to be enough. Now, I could be wrong. If I am, I will make a public statement on Monday. But BYU fans, congratulations. You have done it again. You've won another Twitter poll. If you don't know the history of BYU and Twitter polls back, especially during COVID, there was this massive mascot ranking tournament. And there were over, I believe, 150,000 votes for a cosmothecougar to be the greatest in mascot in college football. It became this massive story on X. It was a massive story within the big 12 within college football, just college sports in general. Now again, this is during COVID. There's nothing going on. The first couple of weeks during COVID when we should have been watching the NCAA basketball men's tournament and women's tournament. But instead, we were watching nothing except for the news that was constantly telling us,"Hey, everybody's going to die. This is so scary." And so people really liked to get an escape and that poll really took off. But BYU does again. Now, not quite as many votes or nearly as many votes, but still get a amount of votes. And total this fan vote got well over 1,000 votes. And this was really fun. I plan on doing this every single year. I'll probably change it up a little bit, but I think ultimately people are going to vote for their team. They're not going to cross-line anybody else. But maybe next year I'll do a greatest mascot tournament and then maybe the next year will be the best helmet tournament. And we'll go from there. So again, just kind of a fun little thing I did on X. So BYU, congratulations. First place in the greatest fan base on X in July. All right. And just to finish out, I do want to mention, while the media did not have an official poll, the coaches did vote on who they believed would be in the conference championship. And the consensus was that Kansas State and Iowa State would be the two teams most likely to reach the big 12 title game. This is interesting because it would be very ironic to see the big 12 open and then close. So again, they're playing in Dublin on week zero, the first game of the college football season. They're facing off against each other. It would be very ironic for that to be the first game of the season. And then the last big 12 game of the season to be them facing off again, but in Arlington in the big 12 championship game, that would just be you almost couldn't make that up, right? That's just one of those things that you have the there's going to be a winner and a loser. So you have the winner and they're the good team all year. Then there's the loser and they're down and they feel like the season's over, but then they fight through adversity and they fight back and then they get an opportunity to avenge their loss in the big 12 championship game. I'm not saying it's going to happen. The coaches seem to think it's going to happen, but I'm here for it. That would be such a fun storyline to follow throughout the season of let's just say Candidate loses to see them lose and be oh and one, but then fight and claw their way back into the conference standings. And then in the last week, they pull off an upset or there's an upset somewhere else that lets them sneak in through a tiebreaker and they get to face off again against Iowa state. And this time, you know, they're able to get the win or whatever. You know, that would just be a fun story. I mean, as a big 12 fan would be again, it's, it's a, you can't, you can't make that kind of stuff up. Now, again, the coaches did vote and how it came out was that Candidate had eight votes. So half of the coaches in the big 12 said Candidate is going to make it seven for Iowa state. Arizona State had six. So a lot of, it seems like a lot of coaches were split between Candidate, Iowa state and Arizona state. So in total, there are 32 votes when you consider that each coach has two votes because there's two slots for the game and 15. So 21 of the 32 votes were split between these three teams. You also had TCU who had three votes, Texas Tech had five votes, Baylor had two votes and Utah got a single vote. It does feel like there's more consensus this year. And I feel like there's a little bit more confidence within the big 12 this year. There are more returning starters. There seems to be less transfers and there just seem to be less questions about the conference this year than what we had last year. I'll remember last year was the first year for a bunch of teams. It was the first year for Arizona, Arizona State Utah in Colorado. Nobody really knew how well a pack 12 roster would match up with a big 12 roster. Now that we're in year two, it kind of feels like a lot of the teams have made those adjustments. Just as an example in the pack 12, it is all about offense, generally speaking. Utah was always kind of the defensive team, but it was all about offense. The big 12 has become more of a defensive league and it is a passing league. You don't see a ton of great running backs, not to say that there aren't any Ollie Gordon just as an example a few years ago, but the big 12 is a passing offense and it is a strong defensive league. I think that caused some inconsistencies for certain teams last year and definitely cost teams like Arizona who maybe wasn't set up for that Utah who definitely wasn't set up for that, but then helps teams like Colorado and Arizona State who were set up for that. I'm not sure, but just the overall feel. I do feel more confident this year saying yes, I think Kansas State is going to be a top three team. Yes, I think Iowa State is going to be a top four team. Yes, I believe that Arizona State is going to be a top five team. I'm a lot more confident in that than I was last year. Just again, I was saying last year Utah is going to come in around the conference. Utah hadn't really played a big 12 style. It hadn't really been through that conference and so while the talent was still there, their defense was great. The offense just wasn't up to par with the rest of the conference and so you saw them lose games not because they weren't good. It was just they didn't score enough points and yeah, I know camera is hurt too, but still you get the idea. Same thing with Arizona. No fafita just wasn't as explosive as everybody thought he'd be and so Arizona struggled a lot more than the media had them at. So like I was saying, we'll see what ends up happening. The coaches seem to think pretty confidently that Kansas State, some combination of Kansas State, Iowa State, Arizona State and I'll throw Texas Tech in there. Some combination of those four teams are very, very likely to end up in the conference championship game. If I had to throw in my vote just without looking at the conference because that is one thing that has to be considered is you have to look at who's playing who. On the top of my head, I want to say Iowa State has a very favorable schedule. I want to say Texas Tech has a very favorable schedule. It's not about the best team. It just matters who you beat and what your record is at the end of the season unless there's high breakers. But if I'm remembering right, I'm just thinking of the other contenders. I think Arizona State has a really tough slate. You always got a really tough slate. I don't have enough confidence in Utah yet. I realize there's a lot of hype about Devon Dan Pierre. I get that, but I just don't have enough to really say with confidence that they're going to be back. If I had a guess, I would probably go Iowa State and Texas Tech. But I do have questions about Texas Tech too, just with their transfer portal class. A lot of times, it just takes time to mesh. What do you think? Do you think that the coach has got to write? Do you think the coach has got to write? Do you think that some combination of those four teams will be in the conference championship game? Do you think it's going to be somebody else? Do you think we're going to get another Arizona State or another BYU from last year? So who is it? Let me know in the comments. So yeah, just let me know what you think. And Monday will have a fun show. I don't see if anything breaks over the weekend if it does. We'll definitely talk about it. And we've only got seven more Saturdays until college football. We're getting there. We are getting there. I cannot wait for the season to start. I don't think there's been this much hype around the conference as a whole. I think that's one of the benefits of not having Texas and Oklahoma is that while the headlines are less around the conference, there is more headlines to be shared. Just watching ESPN watching sports center. They're talking about different teams. They're talking about Kansas State. They're talking about Iowa State. You see stuff about Colorado. You see stuff about Texas Tech. BYU's mentioned Utah's mentioned this is great for the conference before it was just Texas Texas Texas. Oklahoma Texas Texas. Oklahoma. Kansas State Texas Texas Texas. You're not getting that anymore. I think that's healthy for the conference. I think that's really good for the conference because whoever does emerge as the best team, they're going to be able to carry the big 12 brand. And that's something that Brett Uramark is banking on right now. He's banking that as this conference gets better, more brands will emerge and those brands will be able to carry the big 12 to a higher level. So that when we go into a season, it's not a, is the big 12 a one big league. It's, all right, we can expect two teams minimum for the big 12 can they get a third? That takes time. I'm not saying it's going to happen this year. I'm not saying it's going to happen next year. But as the big 12 continues to grow and get a better footprint in college football as the media realizes, the big 12 is not dead. We don't need Texas. And to this point, that hasn't happened yet. But as they start and it does feel like it's starting a little bit as they start to realize that, oh, it's okay that Kansas State's a big brand or it's okay that Baylor's big brand or the BYU's a big brand. They'll start to run with that. And as those teams win and gain traction, just thinking about Clemson. When you think of the best teams in college football, Clemson is towards the top of the list. 20 years ago, Clemson was nothing. It had never been anything, but because they emerged out of the ACC and they were successful for a couple of years in a row. Now they're a household name. Now they're just assumed to be a top 10 team. And when you look at the rankings, you go, wait, where's Clemson? Why are they top 10? It's because they've garnered and gained that support and that trust within the media. So we'll see what happens with the big 12. Like I said, got a fun show on Monday. We'll have a really fun top five Tuesday. And we'll just be breaking news as it comes across. I'm not sure how much we'll be getting, but we will have media days for other conferences starting next week. I will comment, comment and talk about anything that comes up with the big 12 or college football in general that affects the big 12 and give a reaction to that. So thank you so much for tuning in today. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Like I said, seven more Saturdays. We're getting there. Bye.[MUSIC](upbeat music)