The New Big 12: Introducing the Freshman Four

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The College Football landscape is continuously changing with no sign of stopping anytime soon. The latest change is being seen in the Big 12. This change is not the highly talked about and anticipated departure of Texas and Oklahoma to the Southeastern Athletic Conference, rather new additions from the group of five who hope to be competitive in the Big 12 immediately. This Saturday made official the conference's first expansion since 2012, the Big 12 conference was joined by BYU, Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston. College Football fans should be very excited for this change as this will be the lone year in which these four will overlap with Texas and Oklahoma making for an extremely competitive Big 12 conference slate. In a stat from CBS Sports, this will be the only conference in which every single program sits at the top half of college football. This will likely lead to consistently good matchups as well as a fair share of upsets as well that could have major impact the the layout of College Football.

Via Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer/USA TODAY Network

This is also a rather beneficial expansion for Big 12 as despite being group of five programs, all have had a great amount of success on the field as they have spent time in the AP polls as well as produced a solid amount of NFL talent as well in the past several years. Though none of these teams were particularly great this previous season, (BYU finished with a record of 8-5, Cincinnati sat at 9-4, UCF was 9-5, and Houston was 8-5) all these times have had near perfect seasons in the past few years and should rejuvenate a somewhat struggling conference with the Big 12. Though it should make the conference slightly more competitive in some aspects, I wouldn’t expect anything to special from any of the new four programs as their are major adjustments to be made from playing a tough game against a Power 5 program in a bowl game where you have a month of preparation opposed to having a powerhouse opponent week in and week out. Looking at the future odds, Draftkings gives UCF the best odds of the new four programs to win the conference at +4000, while Cincinnati and BYU are at +8000, and Houston currently sits +10000. The projected win totals are listed below:

UCF: 7.0 Wins

Cincinnati: 5.5 Wins

Houston: 5 Wins

BYU: 5.5 Wins

Expect a Big 12 preview coming soon on predictions for the freshman four as well as the rest of the conference.