The biggest Big 12 basketball game of the young season so far featured Texas Tech and BYU, and it delivered. 

The Cougars led by nine midway through the second half after PG Rob Wright fueled a 16-2 run, but they were outdone by a scorching 30-6 tear from the Red Raiders to close the game. 

Tech star JT Toppin dropped 27 points and 12 rebounds, while Wright finished with a game-high 28. Even though BYU’s AJ Dybantsa was held to 6-of-17 shooting, all of the game’s stars flashed throughout.

It was a great showcase for the league. And it’s becoming a common occurrence. Texas Tech and BYU played the two biggest football games of the Big 12 season, and now they’ve played the biggest men’s basketball game of the season to this point. 

It has me asking a simple question: Can anybody in the Big 12 stop these two from dominating the league in the two most high-profile sports moving forward?

Both programs seem better equipped than their peers to thrive in this wide-open era of college sports. 

Tech reportedly spent $28 million on its football roster this year, and billionaire mega-booster Cody Campbell has vowed to double down moving forward. BYU is reportedly committed to giving head football coach Kalani Sitake $10–15 million above the revenue-sharing cap every year, a promise made to keep him from going to Penn State. 

Sitake and Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire both signed lucrative contract extensions this offseason after meeting in the Big 12 title game. Men’s basketball head coaches Kevin Young and Grant McCasland both signed extensions last summer. 

In other words, the brain trust and money aren’t going anywhere at either school. 

And the most recent reporting from Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger indicates college sports are likely to favor schools with the deepest pockets even more in the future.

Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich is openly advocating for eliminating the revenue-sharing cap, which would allow all schools to spend unlimited money on rosters. 

“The idea of capping compensation has never worked in this industry,” said Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich, speaking to Yahoo Sports from his second-floor office on campus Friday morning. “The model we have right now is really difficult to enforce. People who feel like they want to invest should have the ability to invest.”

“Over time, if we have this kind of open system, economics will bring things back to a more normal circumstance,” Radakovich said. “This model would allow this to be fair to those who want to invest and allow the market to settle. It will settle over time. It always has.”

Radakovich isn’t alone. Ohio State AD Ross Bjork and Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua have also expressed the same sentiment. 

So, how much would top programs be spending on rosters in that scenario? About $50 million per year for football in a few years, according to Radakovich.

That is miles away from the estimated $14–15 million slice of the current revenue-sharing cap that many Big 12 schools are fighting to reach for football this year.

Could this all just be posturing by the richest athletics programs in the country, rather than an inevitability? Perhaps. 

Miami outspent Texas Tech’s football roster this year to get to the national championship game, and the Hurricanes have notoriously pushed the envelope (or worse) to acquire talent throughout the program’s history. 

You can argue nobody in the country wants to be more aggressive with roster spending than The U.

But Ross Dellenger writing about it should get your attention. He is the most connected newsbreaker in the sport right now, and the most powerful leaders in college sports trust him and talk to him regularly.

If you’re Texas Tech, this is probably welcome news. Drill baby, drill, as they say. Money seems to be no object, and uncapped spending could free up the Red Raiders to be even more brazen in their talent acquisition efforts. 

If you’re Iowa State, whose AD Jamie Pollard said last year the school needs to decide if it’s going to be Northern Iowa or continue to play at the highest level, it’s not. 

And that’s not to single out the Cyclones. Many other Big 12 schools are in the same boat. Pollard is one of the few ADs to speak publicly in such clear-cut terms about it. 

Money does not buy everything, even in college sports. Iowa State has fueled a top-flight basketball program and a top-25 football program throughout the NIL era so far without a top-flight NIL budget. K-State gave men’s basketball head coach Jerome Tang a top-15 NIL budget each of the last two years, and the Wildcats likely won’t make the NCAA Tournament either season. 

Things also change rapidly in this era. A year ago, I thought this conversation about Tech and BYU was way too premature. I picked the Red Raiders fifth in my Big 12 preseason poll because I hadn’t seen the proof of concept yet. 

It’s certainly possible that 2026 will be full of surprises, and the Big 12 landscape will shift once again. 

But money, combined with great coaching, is nearly unbeatable these days. It appears Tech and BYU have both, while the college sports world continues to reward those assets more than ever.

What You Need to Know

• The Big 12 is hosting the first on-site College Gameday of the basketball season. 

• According to On3, the Big 12 has two teams with top-ten transfer portal classes. 247 Sports has a different Big 12 team in its top-ten portal classes. 

• Baylor successfully held off a late charge from the SEC to sign one of the most talented quarterbacks in the transfer portal. 

• A legendary Big 12 head football coach might be heading to the Big Ten. 

• A former K-State star football player is transferring to Kansas to play for Lance Leipold. 

• One Big 12 head coach says a rival’s home arena is one of the top five environments in college basketball. Hint: it’s not Allen Fieldhouse.

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