With the spring football season and both transfer portal windows in the rear-view mirror, it's time to start seriously considering how the 2025 college football season will play out.
With that in mind, let's take a look at HailWV's expectations for the Big 12 this season, including where the West Virginia Mountaineers fall in a crowded league.
There's something to be said for going all-in regarding the transfer portal. It's how Deion Sanders turned Colorado from bottom-feeder to conference contender in just two seasons -- and Texas Tech certainly went all-in this offseason.
Cody Campbell -- an energy CEO and NIL donor who chairs Texas Tech's Board of Regents and may soon work closely with Nick Saban and Donald Trump on a presidential commission that WVU coach Rich Rodriguez also seems interested in -- helped use his large pockets to propel the Red Raiders to the second-best transfer portal class nationally.
Tech brings in 13 four-star prospects in the portal -- compared to 16 amongst the league's other 15 teams combined -- and adds them to a program that finished 8-5 overall in 2024 and returns a veteran fifth-year quarterback in Behren Morton.
Arizona State was nobody's pick to capture the Big 12 Championship and an automatic bid to the College Football Playoff last season until they took the gridiron in the fall and pulled it off. While there are questions as to whether they can maintain momentum from their meteoric rise, the pieces are in place.
Kenny Dillingham enters his third season as coach -- right around the time when coaches really tend to start cooking at a new program, as they have their culture set in place and begin to develop their own recruits -- and he gets back signal caller Sam Leavitt, who is the presumed top quarterback in the league headed into 2024.
Add in 10 returning defensive starters and Army transfer running back Kanye Udoh, who comes off a 1,000 yard season and looks to replace Cam Skattebo, and Arizona State has what it takes to run it back.
Dave Aranda entered last season on the hot seat, and most thought he'd be gone by the end of the season following a 2-4 start for Baylor. But then something changed.
The Bears finished their season with six consecutive regular season wins before dropping a bowl game to LSU. Now, coming off an 8-5 season with tons of momentum, Baylor returns their starting quarterback, two leading rushers, two leading receivers, and 4-of-5 starting offensive linemen from an offense that ranked 20th nationally in FBS and averaged 440 yards per game in 2024. That's a recipe for success.
Iowa State comes off an 11-3 finish and Pop Tarts Bowl win over Miami (FL) after finishing second in the Big 12 in 2024.
Head Coach Matt Campbell has been nothing but consistent at Iowa State -- barring his first season leading the program and an anomaly in 2022, he has failed to lead the Cyclones to anything less than a fourth-place finish in the Big 12. With veteran quarterback Rocco Becht and leading rushers Carson Hansen and Abu Sama returning, there's no reason to expect anything less than a top four league finish once again.
Consistency also has been key for Kansas State's Chris Klieman, who has led Kansas State to three consecutive seasons with nine-or-more wins. The Wildcats looked to be on the verge of a Big 12 Championship as November began last year, but a late-season collapse dropped them out of contention. Quarterback Avery Johnson and running back Dylan Edwards return, and Kansas State should be considered an upper-tier team in the league until they prove otherwise.
It'd be easy to discount Utah after a 2-7 Big 12 finish and 5-7 overall record in 2024, but it's hard to discount a team led by Kyle Wittingham -- who enters his 22nd season on the job, and has led Utah to 17 bowl appearances, 11 bowl wins, and three conference championships over that timeframe.
New quarterback Devon Dampier and his former offensive coordinator Jason Beck come to Utah from New Mexico after leading the fourth-best offense in FBS (484 yards per game), and if they mesh well with Wittingham's leadership, Utah could be a contender yet again.
Another veteran coach with an aptitude for winning not to count out is Willie Fritz, entering his second season at Houston. The Cougars finished 12th in the league and 4-8 overall in his first season with the program in 2024, but he remains the fourth-winningest active FBS head coach, and given his track record, it's best not to assume Houston remains at the bottom of the league for long.
The program has a history of winning and sits in a rich recruiting area. This offseason, they put together the third-best transfer portal class in the Big 12, which includes a former five-star recruit in quarterback Conner Weigman. Expect some improvement from the Cougars this season.
TCU quietly finished with nine wins in 2024, and won 6-of-7 games to close their season. TCU coach Sonny Dykes and his program have a College Football Playoff pedigree, having made the playoff just a few years ago. Quarterback Jake Hoover returns, and if TCU can keep their momentum from last fall rolling to start the season, they could easily be team that finishes in the top-half of the league.
Kansas returns a veteran quarterback in Jalon Daniels and is another team that started slow but finished strong in 2024 -- going from 1-5 to start the season to 4-2 to finish it, with one of those losses coming by just two points. Five of their losses also came on blown late-game leads. Lance Leipold has proven he can turn Kansas into a strong program on the gridiron, and the Jayhawks hope to right the ship in 2025 but must adjust to a new offensive coordinator for the second consecutive season.
West Virginia fired now-former head coach Neal Brown this offseason and to replace him, the Mountaineers hired Rich Rodriguez, who previously led the program to some of their most prominent success in the 2000s.
The Mountaineers come off a disappointing six-season tenure with Brown and have turned over a large chunk of the roster, with next-to-no starters returning and 51 new transfers joining. But Rodriguez knows how to win in Morgantown and is sixth among active FBS coaches in career wins -- second only to Fritz in the Big 12 -- and has only seen one losing season in his past 10 seasons as a head coach. Don't expect a league title, but certainly some fight from WVU.
Oklahoma State was winless in the Big 12 and finished 3-9 overall in 2024, a pitiful finish for a program who made the Big 12 Championship the year prior. The offseason was chaotic and dramatic, but head coach Mike Gundy returns to helm the program for his 21st season.
Eight of Gundy's seasons with the program have seen the Cowboys win ten-or-more games, and they've finished in the top three of the Big 12 nine times since the league eliminated divisions in 2011 -- so despite the rocky 2024 season, expect Gundy and the fifth-best transfer portal class in the Big 12 to rebound at least somewhat this season.
BYU finished 2024 sitting third in the Big 12 with an 11-2 overall record, and they handled conference foe Colorado in a bowl game to close the year with momentum. But there were questions about how strong they were all year -- five wins came by one possession or less -- and now they face a much-tougher schedule after bringing in a transfer class ranked last in the Big 12. Don't count them out as contenders, but returning quarterback Jake Retzlaff and company have some work ahead of them.
Arizona had a slow start to the Brent Brennan era, and despite returning one of the most promising quarterback-receiver combinations in the country in Noah Fifita and Tetairoa McMillan, the Wildcats went from 10-3 in 2023 to 4-8 in 2024.
Now, Brennan is back for year two and Fifita returns, but McMillan is gone (he was selected eight overall in the 2025 NFL Draft) and the Wildcats enter the season with two new coordinators and a transfer class that ranks in the bottom half of the Big 12.
Deion Sanders' turnaround of the Colorado program is nothing to sneeze at, and the Buffaloes defied the odds to finish in the top four of the Big 12 last season -- but Heisman winner Travis Hunter and NFL quarterback Shedeur Sanders are off to the NFL, and whether Coach Prime's methods achieve consistency at the power conference level are yet to be seen.
The Buffs bring in a promising quarterback in Liberty transfer Kaidon Salter, but whether the offensive line can block for him remains to be seen .
UCF managed just two wins in the Big 12 and a 4-8 overall record in 2024 -- they brought in a new head coach in Scott Frost, and are second behind West Virginia in transfer portal additions with 40 total. Frost took UCF to national prominence in a previous stint at the school, but has some bad mojo to shake off from a stint at Nebraska that saw him go 16-31 overall. He can likely turn UCF into a contender, but expectations should be tampered in 2025.
Cincinnati coach Scott Satterfield enters his third season at the program -- he went 5-7 in 2024 and 3-9 in 2023, and brings in just the 1th-best transfer class in the Big 12. Cincinnati has not adjusted to the Power Four well, and Satterfield's track record doesn't suggest he has either -- in his past six seasons with power conference programs at Louisville and Cincinnati, he's 19-32 in league play and 33-40 overall