So, as it turns out, I was a little off with this take last week. 

Arizona proved that Utah has flaws like everybody else in the league, especially without Cam Rising under center. That dramatically changes the outlook for the Big 12 title race.

The league is exactly what everybody predicted before the season: wide open. 

We started the year with a list of seven or eight Big 12 title contenders; we’re still at that same number five weeks in. You just need to swap in BYU for Oklahoma State and Texas Tech or Colorado for Kansas. 

Unfortunately, without Utah as a frontrunner that the country trusts as a top-ten team, the haters are coming out of the woodwork to take shots at the Big 12.

It’s one thing for an SEC-based podcast host to do it, but what about big-J Journalist David Hale at ESPN in a story that ran on ESPN.com on Sunday?

It’s as predictable as it is frustrating. 

Yes, the Big 12 may struggle if they see Alabama or Georgia in a 4 v. 5 seed matchup in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals, but so would literally anybody outside of Texas, Ohio State, or Bama/Georgia themselves. 

It’s not a Big 12-specific problem, yet the haters will let the league bear the brunt of the criticism on a Saturday when assumed playoff teams Ole Miss and Miami either lost or should have lost to unranked teams at home. 

The only way to change the narrative is to win playoff games. Period. 

Hopefully that happens. But for now, let’s focus on an incredible week in college football’s most exciting conference.

Week Five: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good

Colorado’s Improvement 

Don’t look now, but Coach Prime’s Colorado Buffaloes look like they’re improving the way a well-coached team does throughout a season. 

Not only did the Buffs clobber UCF on the road, their most lopsided conference road win in almost twenty years, but they did so by flexing their improvement in their two biggest areas of weakness: the running game and the defense. 

UCF star running back RJ Harvey put up 168 total yards, but Colorado held the nation’s best rushing attack to nearly 200 yards below its season average and forced four turnovers. That’s an impressive accomplishment for a unit that’s been criticized often since Coach Prime took over last year. 

It did help that CU’s offense jumped out to a big enough lead that the Knights had to throw the ball more than they’d prefer. And a big key to those efforts was the best game Colorado’s offensive line has played all season. 

They paved the way for a season-high 128 rushing yards and only allowed two sacks. With an elite quarterback and receiving corps, Colorado doesn’t need a dominant ground game; they need a competent one. 

That’s finally what they got on Saturday.

Arizona Out-Toughing Utah

Who had Arizona manhandling Utah on their bingo card?

Yeah, yeah; I know Cam Rising didn’t play, but that didn’t stop the Utes from being the more physical team in Stillwater two weeks ago. 

That honor went to the visitors on Saturday in Salt Lake City. Arizona averaged 6.5 yards per carry, and Utah only 2.9. The Wildcats’ defense racked up three sacks, eight tackles for loss, and an incredible eight pass breakups. 

We don’t always think of physicality extending beyond the front seven, but Arizona’s defensive backs mauled the Utah receivers all night long – led by a sterling effort from potential first-round draftee Tacario Davis. 

Don’t worry; I didn’t forget about the handful of clutch throws made by unflappable Arizona quarterback Noah Fifita, either. 

With the Utah crowd at full-throat early in the fourth quarter after the Utes had closed to within 16-10, Fifita led the Wildcats on a tough-as-nails touchdown drive that included completions of 35 and 41 yards on two 3rd and 11s. 

This was a completely different Arizona team from the one that left the field in Manhattan, Kansas, 15 days earlier. 

Wildcats head coach Brent Brennan thrust his squad right back into contender status with arguably the best win of the young Big 12 season. 

Avery Johnson’s Bounce Back Game

Slow starts offensively have been a trend for K-State this year, and the Wildcats found themselves in a familiar position midway through the second quarter against Oklahoma State. 

After a brutal Avery Johnson interception, K-State and its struggling offense trailed Oklahoma State 13-7. Would this end the same way the first half did in Provo after a turnover led to the team completely unraveling? 

Johnson made sure the answer was an emphatic “no.” 

Two plays later, he tossed the first of his season-high three touchdown passes and didn’t look back. Johnson picked up Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week honors after finishing with 319 total yards and five touchdowns. 

It was by far his best performance through the air and inspired more confidence than any other game this season that he is going to be what K-State fans envisioned. 

“Things aren’t always going to go my way,” Johnson said. “The biggest thing, especially for a young quarterback, is how are you going to respond when adversity hits? I did a poor job last week of responding in adverse times. A big focus for this week was just not letting any pressure, any of that stuff get to me this week. I just wanted to go out and play free and play my game.”

Ask anybody within the walls of the Vanier Football Complex in Manhattan, and they’ll tell you that Johnson is wise beyond his years. That quote, and more importantly, Saturday’s performance, provided concrete evidence that they’re right. 

BYU’s Fast Start

Say what you will about a young K-State team handing BYU a game or Baylor being broken by their loss in Boulder, but it’s time to give the Cougars their due respect. 

Two weeks in a row, they’ve buried Big 12 opponents. 

Baylor did have the ball down one possession with just over a minute left, but BYU put them into too big of a hole to complete the comeback. Twice, the Cougars built a 21-point lead. 

It would have been easy to coast off of a monster upset win over K-State, but head coach Kalani Sitake had his team focused from the jump in Waco. 

“A little dramatic at the end there,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake said. “I’d like to see us finish business. But I was proud of the team, proud of the way the guys responded, their response to adversity and within the game, and their willingness to stick together. That was something special.”

The Cougars are now 5-0 for the third time in five seasons, and they’ve already matched their Big 12 win total from last year. 

They get a bye week to prepare for back-to-back home games against Arizona and Oklahoma State. Neither will be easy, but it goes without saying that BYU is a tough out in Provo. 

If the Cougars emerge from that stretch at 7-0, they will be in prime position to lock down a trip to Arlington for the Big 12 Championship Game. 

Matt Campbell’s Iowa State Career

Iowa State’s shutout win at Houston wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing game Cyclones fans will ever watch, but it was a ruthlessly effective effort from the defense. In fact, ISU hadn’t had a road conference shutout since 1971. 

But the real significance of the win was making Matt Campbell the all-time winningest coach in Iowa State football history. His 57th win since taking over in Ames vaulted him past Dan McCarney. 

There’s little doubt about his place in his ISU history after inheriting the mess that Paul Rhoads left behind. Campbell has taken the Cyclones to a Big 12 title game, won a Fiesta Bowl, and significantly improved Iowa State’s presence on Sundays in the NFL. 

With arguably the league’s most manageable conference schedule, the stage is set for Campbell to make history by putting together the first ten-win season in ISU history. 

He’ll just need a lot more out of his offense than he got on Saturday to make it happen.

The Bad

KU’s Ability to Close

The frustration continues for Kansas – the Jayhawks lost their fourth straight game to TCU on Saturday at Arrowhead. 

Yet again, the Jayhawks stumbled down the stretch. They had a 24-21 lead late into the third quarter before a controversial punt return changed the game. 

KU head coach Lance Leipold thought there was a missed block in the back penalty, and he might be right. But Kansas came unraveled after the play and let the Horned Frogs score 17 of the game’s final 20 points to win. 

Leipold was also unhappy with a potential third and long conversion for his team that was ruled incomplete and an overturned fumble by TCU quarterback Josh Hoover.

I can understand some frustration, but Leipold needs to look in the mirror before he looks at the guys in stripes. 

The Jayhawks can’t finish games right now. They led by 11 in Morgantown with 5:39 left and lost. They blew an 11-point lead to UNLV and lost at Illinois despite leading in the fourth quarter.

It’s easy to come up with a new scapegoat every week – the refs, Jeff Grimes, Jalon Daniels, etc. – but at the end of the day, this just isn’t a very good team right now. That starts with Leipold himself. 

Kansas still has enough talent to rally to bowl eligibility, but they’re running out of time to right the ship and instill confidence in a team that desperately needs it.

Brendan Sorsby Deserved Better

First things first: give all the credit in the world to Texas Tech for outlasting Cincinnati. 

The Red Raiders offense piled up almost 500 yards and didn’t punt until their final possession, and the defense made key plays when they had to – like A.J. McCarty’s 51-yard pick-six. Three straight wins have put them back into the Big 12 contender discussion.

But I can’t help but want a better result for Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby after he threw for 426 yards and four touchdowns – especially when he did it without his top two running backs for most of the game. Starter Cory Kiner left with an injury after just three carries. 

The Bearcats are infinitely more watchable this year, with Sorsby leading the charge. With a 12 to 1 TD/INT ratio and nearly 300 yards passing per game, he’s the main reason they’re only a couple of plays away from being 5-0. 

He’s also the main reason Cincy will continue to be a thorn in the side of Big 12 contenders the rest of the year.

The Ugly

Oklahoma State’s Offense

There’s just no way Oklahoma State’s offense should be this bad.

The Cowboys brought back the best running back in the country, one of the most experienced offensive lines in the country, a stable of talented receivers, and their starting quarterback. 

But it just isn’t working, and I don’t know if the answers are on the OSU roster right now. 

The Cowboys moved the ball in the first half against K-State and had a chance to take control after an Avery Johnson interception, but they couldn’t cash in on five drives inside the Wildcats 35-yard line. 

Those five drives resulted in only 13 points, including a lost fumble and a missed field goal. It was all K-State after that – the Cowboys didn’t score again until a late garbage-time touchdown against K-State reserves. 

Much of the fan frustration has centered around starting quarterback Alan Bowman. 

“I’ll be really honest with you, there was four or five plays that would’ve made the general public say he played really bad, when the other 55 plays he played really good,” OSU head coach Mike Gundy said. “When I graded him Saturday, that’s what I saw.”

That won’t appease the fans, but it’s hard to argue too much with Gundy based on his track record. Everybody wrote the Cowboys off last year after a 26-point home loss to South Alabama and a tumultuous offseason. All he did was shove a ten-win season in the face of his doubters. 

Stay tuned for how he responds this year. 

Houston’s Offense

You have to feel for Houston fans. 

Cincinnati and Iowa State have shut out the Cougars in back-to-back games. Only three of their ten drives on Saturday made it into Cyclone territory. 

They tried rotating quarterbacks, but nothing is working. 

The numbers are nothing short of ugly. They’re averaging only 10 points and 151 yards per game, both last in the league by a wide margin. 

“It weighs on everybody,” Houston coach Willie Fritz said. “This is a real tough stretch for me. We’re going to get it going. We’re going to work on it every single week. I’ve got to see the end game and see that progress takes a little bit. I just think we can play better than what we’ve been playing.”

Fritz is an outstanding program builder who has succeeded at every stage of his career, but it will take him some time to turn Houston around.

The good news is that they’ll see the TCU and Kansas defenses next, which haven’t exactly been setting the world on fire.

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