Brett Yormark called the Big 12 the deepest football conference in America after a 2025 season that gave the conference several strong teams, a playoff contender and plenty of weekly chaos. The problem is that the actual resume does not support the "deepest football conference" claim.
The Big 12 was good and it had balance near the top, but the final poll, playoff field, postseason results and NFL Draft all point somewhere else.
The Big 12 was not college football's deepest conference
The College Football Playoff committee gave the Big 12 one team and that was Texas Tech.
BYU finished just outside the field after losing the Big 12 Championship Game, but "almost" cannot carry an argument about being the deepest conference in the country. Especially when the SEC had five teams and the Big Ten had three teams.
To make matters worse, Texas Tech lost 23-0 to Oregon in the Orange Bowl quarterfinal. That didn't really help Yormark's case.
The final AP poll hurt Yormark's case for the Big 12
The Big 12 finished with five ranked teams: Texas Tech at No. 7, BYU at No. 11, Utah at No. 14, Houston at No. 22 and TCU at No. 25. That is a strong showing, but again, it wasn't the best.
The SEC finished with seven ranked teams. The Big Ten finished with six. The Big Ten also had three teams in the top five: national champion Indiana at No. 1, Oregon at No. 4 and Ohio State at No. 5. The SEC had four teams in the top 10: Ole Miss, Georgia, Texas A&M and Alabama.
The bowl results were fine for the Big 12, but certainly not dominant
The Big 12 did not separate itself in the postseason as a whole. The conference went 4-4 in bowl games. The Big Ten went 11-5. The ACC went 9-5. Both finished with better bowl winning percentages than the Big 12.
The NFL Draft showed the Big 12 is still a couple steps behind the SEC and Big Ten
The NFL Draft is not a perfect measure of conference strength, but it is one of the clearest ways to judge high-end roster talent.
The SEC had 87 players drafted. The Big Ten had 68. The Big 12 had 38, tied with the ACC for third among conferences. The Big 12 set a conference record, and it still finished 49 picks behind the SEC and 30 behind the Big Ten.
Texas Tech did its part with nine draft picks. But the rest of the conference couldn't keep up.
The bottom of the conference was terrible
The Big 12 had real top-end strength with Texas Tech, BYU, Utah and Houston. Arizona, TCU and Iowa State also gave the conference a respectable middle. But the teams at the bottom were just downright awful.
Six Big 12 teams finished with losing records: Baylor, Kansas, UCF, West Virginia, Colorado and Oklahoma State. Colorado went 3-9 and Oklahoma State went 1-11 and 0-9 in conference play.
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