Five bold, crazy, stupid, daring, wacky Big 12 college football predictions for the 2019 season.
5 (Potentially) Stupid Big 12 Predictions
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What if you were told last year at this time that Kyler Murray was going to be the No. 1 pick in the 2019 NFL Draft?
What if you were told last year at this time that Dana Holgorsen would make the movies-to-TV career choice of leaving a Power Five school for a Group of Fiver?
What if you were told last year at this time that Kliff Kingsbury would parlay a disappointing losing season into the Arizona Cardinal head coaching job?
What if you were told last year at this time that Les Miles would be a Big 12 head coach … at Kansas?
They’re the wild and wacky curveballs that make each season fun. Enough safe and sane, it’s time for dumb and dangerous with five (potentially) stupid predictions thrown at the wall to see if they stick.
– 5 (Potentially) Stupid SEC Predictions
5. Nine Big 12 teams will be bowl eligible
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the actual on-the-record call is that Texas Tech and Kansas won’t get to six wins, but forget that … we’re going wacky here.
It’s actually not that insane to suggest that nine of the ten teams in a conference that calls itself the Big 12 will end up going bowling.
Eight Big 12 teams got bowl eligible in 2017 and seven got there last season. In 2012, though, everyone but Kansas got a swag bag.
Oklahoma and Texas are mortal locks to get to six wins, and go ahead and throw Oklahoma State and TCU into that bucket, too.
Non-conference games at Missouri and against NC State keep West Virginia from being an automatic …. sorry. Of course the Mountaineers will go bowling.
– Greatest Big 12 NFL Draft Picks of All-Time
Baylor’s non-conference schedule? Stephen F. Austin, UTSA and Rice. It’s getting to six wins.
Iowa State has earned the benefit of several doubts at this point, but it might be a wee bit of a fight if it can’t get by Iowa … whatever. The Cyclones are going bowling.
Kansas State is a bit of a wild-card – it’ll need to come up with something big late to get to six wins, but this is a better team than the 5-7 squad of last season. It’ll go bowling under new head man Chris Klieman.
That leaves Kansas – no – and Texas Tech.
Quarterback injuries kept last year’s Red Raider team from getting to six wins. This time around, new head coach Matt Wells will have to come up with at least a few upsets in Big 12 play, and it would be a huge help if he could pull out a win at Arizona.
Texas Tech is going 5-7, but that’s not why you called … give it a sixth win somewhere.
NEXT: The Big 12 vs. SEC …
4. The Big 12 will go 0-3 against the SEC
Texas beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, Oklahoma State took down Missouri in the Liberty Bowl, and Baylor got by Vanderbilt in the Texas Bowl.
Throw in the Texas win over Missouri – who’s really more of a Big 12 team playing in the SEC – in the 2017 Texas Bowl, and TCU’s win over Arkansas in 2017, and the Big 12 has been okay against the best conference in college football over the last two seasons.
Texas Tech, though, got ripped up by Ole Miss in the 2018 season opener.
Kansas State got ripped up at home against Mississippi State and lost at Vanderbilt two seasons ago.
No, there’s no complaining about Oklahoma not beating to beat Alabama or Georgia in the last two College Football Playoffs – all is forgiven there.
This season, in three high-profile non-conference games, it’s going to be a rough run for the Big 12.
West Virginia has to go to Missouri. It’s a good Mountaineer team that should be able to battle, but the Tigers are in for a strong season, even though the NCAA won’t let them go bowling.
Kansas State couldn’t get by Mississippi State last year in Manhattan, and it’s not happening in Starkville this season.
And then there’s biggest battle of the bunch – LSU at Texas.
The Longhorns won the last meeting between the two in the 2003 Cotton Bowl, and before that, they played several times before you were born. This time around, it’s arguably the best non-conference game of the season.
This Tiger team is going to be a killer on the road in big games, and this won’t be like the Sugar Bowl against a Georgia team that played like it got its heart stomped on by Jalen Hurts in the SEC Championship.
Texas is great, and LSU will be better.
NEXT: The coaching turnover will continue
3. There will be three new Big 12 head coaches in 2020 …
And not because any of them will be bad.
Kansas got Les Miles, Kansas State came up with a great hire of North Dakota State’s Chris Klieman, Texas Tech brought on Matt Wells from Utah State, and West Virginia was able to land a rising superstar in Troy’s Neal Brown.
40% of the Big 12 is working through a new coaching regime. Since we’re going reckless and irresponsible here, let’s make the call …
30% of the Big 12 will work through a new coaching regime next year at this time, too.
Matt Rhule was playing footsie with the New York Jets open head coaching gig this offseason. Baylor is going to be even better this year, and he’s still a good enough coach to be off to the NFL very, very soon – if not an even bigger college job.
Iowa State is just renting Matt Campbell.
He might have a $7 million buyout clause, but considering what he’s doing at Iowa State is close to miraculous, any bigger program would find the change in the cushions to get the 39-year-old if he has one more successful season. Campbell played at Pitt, but he could be in the mix for something much bigger.
And here’s where it gets tricky.
– CFN Big 12 Team-By-Team Predictions
Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy is going into his 15th season at Oklahoma State. His offenses have been brilliant, his program has gone to 13 straight bowl games – winning four of the last five – and he came achingly close to playing for the national title back in 2011.
If LSU has a disastrous season, or if Auburn decides to part ways with Gus Malzahn, or if there’s any other big job opening where Gundy’s program doesn’t have to take on the second-banana role to a team in its own state, he has more than earned his stripes to at least check out one of the premier jobs in college football.
Can you imagine Gundy in Los Angeles at the USC gig?
Nah, he’s not going anywhere, and neither is Gary Patterson.
After 18 years at TCU, if Patterson was going to leave, he’d have done it by now.
On a roll, he came up with three seasons of 11 or more wins in four years before going 7-6 last season, and he had six top ten finishes in the last 11 campaigns.
So considering Kansas, Kansas State, Texas Tech and West Virginia aren’t going to be looking for coaches next year, and Tom Herman is all but cemented at Texas for now, and TCU and Oklahoma State appear to be set, and the gigs at Baylor and Iowa State might be in play, that leaves …
NEXT: The biggest coaching move in all of football in 2020 will be …
2. Lincoln Riley will be the head coach of the 2020 Dallas Cowboys
Kliff Kingsbury went 35-40 in a painfully underwhelming career at Texas Tech. He was fired, fell up to the USC offensive coordinator job, and left a month later to become the Arizona Cardinal head man.
If that guy could get that, imagine what gig a soon-to-be 36-year-old Lincoln Riley could get after going 24-4 in two seasons as a head coach with two Big 12 titles, two trips to the College Football Playoff, two Heisman-winning, No. 1 overall draft pick quarterbacks who put up two of the greatest seasons in college football history.
You know what that job is, and so does the rest of the football world. Now we just have to wait one more season before these two kids can finally get together.
The Dallas Cowboys almost certainly would’ve made the move this offseason if they didn’t rally to make the playoffs.
Jason Garrett has been fine, but he has only been to the playoffs three times in just over eight years as the head coach, and he’s just 2-3 in the playoffs with no Super Bowl appearances.
He’s also in the last year of his contract, and Jerry Jones – who’ll turn 77 this football season – doesn’t appear to have any interest in adding an extension.
Lincoln Riley has a huge deal at Oklahoma that pays him over $32 million until 2023 – and could name his price if he wanted even more to stick around.
The buyout? $4.6 million.
Jones has $4.6 million for breakfast.
If this really does happen and Jones really does want the OU head man, and vice versa, it’s probably going to cost him a whole lot more than it would’ve after the 2019 season, because …
NEXT: It’s next-step-forward time
1. Oklahoma is going to play for the College Football Playoff national championship
The Big 12 is the one Power Five conference to not have a team play for the national title. That ends this year.
If the goal was to come as close to playing for a College Football Playoff national championship without actually doing it, Oklahoma would be the king of the world.
Just five schools – Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Ohio State and Oregon – have played for a CFP national title, and just four made the playoff multiple times. Only Bama and Clemson have made the young tournament more often than the Sooners.
OU wasn’t close to getting by Clemson in the 2015 Orange Bowl, suffered a heartbreaker of heartbreakers to Georgia in the Rose Bowl at the end of the 2017 season, and last year it couldn’t get past Alabama in another trip to the Orange.
This year, the Sooners will finally get past the bouncer.
Even if Alabama and Clemson are 1-2 in the CFP in some way – hardly a given if one of the two loses a game along the way, they might play in a semifinal – this Oklahoma team might just have what it takes.
Maybe it’s because Jalen Hurts brings something a wee bit different.
Obviously Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray were special, but Hurts has actually done it. He has been in national championships and was way-too-close to being a two-time national title-winning starter.
Maybe it’s because the defense is going to tackle someone this year.
The D was a polite rumor throughout last season, but new coordinator Alex Grinch was brought in to change all of that. The offense might not be as explosive, but that should be offset by the improvement on the other side.
Maybe it’s because the idea of Hurts playing against Alabama for the national title is just too scrumptious.
Maybe it’s just Oklahoma’s time.
– CFN Preview 2019: All 130 Team Previews
Big 12 Team Previews, 5 Things To Know
Baylor | Iowa State | Kansas | Kansas State | Oklahoma
Oklahoma State | TCU | Texas | Texas Tech | West Virginia
– 2019 Big 12 Preview
– Ranking The Big 12 Coaches
– CFN All-Big 12 Team & Top 30 Players
– CFN Big 12 Team-By-Team Predictions
– Big 12 Schedules
