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The Meanest Fans in the Big 12
And Lincoln Riley connected to Big 12 coaching search
We Are Loaded
This is the time of year when there’s simply too much content for me to get to everything I want to. Today, we have the All-Big 12 football team, a Big 12 Championship Game preview, and the latest installment of the Big 12 basketball anonymous player survey.
Let’s start with some quick headlines.
What You Need to Know
The All-Big 12 teams and awards are out. Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham won Coach of the Year, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter are the Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year, and there’s some controversy over the first-team All-Big 12 running back picks.
Just days after stealing Houston’s defensive coordinator, Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire has his man at offensive coordinator in Texas State’s Mack Leftwich. Football Scoop called Leftwich arguably the most in-demand name on the Power Four coordinator market. Utah, Houston, Arizona, and Tech were all interested.
Brendan Sorsby is staying at Cincinnati for another season. That is a massive boost for the Bearcats’ 2025 season. Sorsby threw for 2,800 yards this season.
According to The Athletic, UCF called none other than USC head coach Lincoln Riley about their head coach opening. Riley reportedly has a $90 million buyout at USC and just went 6-6. He issued a public denial yesterday.
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Big 12 Anonymous Player Survey: Who Has the Meanest Fans?
It’s time for the Big 12 basketball anonymous player survey!
I talked to around 20 players at Big 12 Media Day in Kansas City and got their choices for Big 12 champion, favorite opposing coach in the league, school with the meanest fans, and much more.
Not every player wanted to answer every question, and I respect that, so not every category will have 20 responses. This category had fewer responses, so keep the sample size in mind, but we had a surprising winner for the school with the meanest fans…
Baylor got twice as many votes as anybody else for the meanest fans in the league.
Baylor - 4
Texas Tech - 2
West Virginia - 2
Iowa State - 1
Kansas - 1
Texas (yes, I know) - 1
“I’m gonna go with Baylor because they were talking the most crazy when we were there. They’re right behind the bench. They were calling fouls for us and stuff that they didn’t like, so it got ugly.”
“Might be Baylor. I think they might have thrown some water on us after the game.”
“Texas Tech. They’ll call you anything out there.”
“Texas Tech. They’ll let you have it at Tech. It’s crazy.”
“Probably Iowa State. Just the things the crowd was yelling were a bit offensive at times. And it’s very loud.”
“West Virginia. They were heckling even during warm ups.”
“Kansas. I didn’t hear what they were saying but it was probably something crazy.”
“Texas had some crazy fans, too. They were just throwing bottles and stuff at the football game.”
Big 12 Championship Game Primer
I’ll be previewing games every week based on a scale of one to five Yormarks. Five Yormarks is the most entertaining and enticing game possible, while one Yormark is a snooze-fest.
All times listed are Central Time (CST)
Five Yormarks
What, you thought this wouldn’t be a five-Yormark game?
The Big 12 takes center stage as one of only three conference championship games this weekend that will determine who actually makes the College Football Playoff field. For once, the SEC and Big Ten are more of an afterthought, with Georgia, Texas, Penn State, and Oregon all safely in the field.
Let’s take a moment to admire the fact that this championship game is between the teams picked 6th and 16th in the Big 12 preseason poll.
After hanging around as a cute story for the first half of the season, head coach Kenny Dillingham and Arizona State exploded onto the scene with a monster November that included resounding wins over K-State and BYU.
Iowa State roared out of the gates to a 7-0 start before a midseason lull turned into back-to-back losses to Texas Tech and Kansas. The Cyclones rallied to take care of Cincinnati, Utah, and K-State to punch their ticket to Arlington.
A huge and unfortunate storyline this week is the health of Sun Devils star receiver Jordan Tyson. He won’t play the rest of the year after getting injured in the third quarter of last week’s game at Arizona, which was already well in hand.
Kenny Dillingham mentioned that Jordyn Tyson underwent surgery yesterday:
"He's doing well. Had surgery yesterday, he's on his road to that recovery. It's unfortunate, but we're trying to get him back and by next season, we can go from there."
@DevilsDigest
— Justin LaCertosa (@LaCertosaSports)
7:36 PM • Dec 4, 2024
Tyson was a massive part of ASU’s offense this year – he picked up first-team All-Big 12 honors after catching 75 passes for over 1,100 yards. That leaves a big hole in the Sun Devils’ passing game while facing the Big 12’s best passing defense on Saturday.
The good news for ASU is that they have first-team All-Big 12 running Cam Skattebo, and Iowa State is 14th in the conference in run defense. Only seven FBS running backs have more rushing yards than Skattebo this year. When Iowa State faced the other first-team All-Big 12 running back, UCF’s RJ Harvey, they were gashed for 196 yards and two touchdowns.
There’s another matchup between strength and weakness in this game, too. That’s the explosive Iowa State passing attack going up against the ASU pass defense that is 101st in the country in dropback success rate.
ISU quarterback Rocco Becht has had issues taking care of the football this year. According to Pro Football Focus, only one quarterback in the league had more turnover-worthy throws. The good news for Cyclones fans is that he is almost always the one making the clutch plays down the stretch to win the game.
Does he have one more in him?
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