Omens in college football can be a powerful thing. In a sport that exists on superstition almost as much as tradition, anything out of the ordinary tends to draw a raised eyebrow and a mental note.
Still, it’s hard to mistake what occurred in the middle of the third quarter Saturday night at LaVell Edwards Stadium as anything but ominous for a team that had been living a charmed existence amid a 9–0 record. Cosmo, the No. 7 BYU Cougars’ mascot, was attempting to flip over a speeding golf cart in his latest stunt. His leg clipped the roof and he salvaged a landing to some light, polite applause from the 62,704 in attendance on a cold Provo, Utah, night.
It was almost as if those fans in royal blue buried beneath a layer of heavy coats knew, though. The fact a quarterback pooch punt was recovered and led to the winning touchdown a few minutes later? Well, that’s just an abstract reason for a surprising final score layered over a real one.
“It sucks,” a blunt BYU coach Kalani Sitake said in the wake of a 17–13 loss to the Kansas Jayhawks that knocked his team from the ranks of the unbeaten. “But you know, I think that happens, that’s why the ball is shaped like that—to make things interesting. It just bit us in the butt this time.”
Interesting sure, entertaining always. This is the Big 12, a league where every game seems to be a coin flip coming in, fourth quarters are generally played on a knife’s edge, three-point spreads are the default and underdogs only exist in the minds of outsiders.
This is a conference of contenders—nearly all 16 teams at one point this month—that seem hell-bent on leaning into the randomness of college football. Four teams exited Week 12 with two or fewer conference losses and remain alive for what is likely one bid to the College Football Playoff.
BYU was picked 13th in the preseason media poll and still controls its fate, as do the Colorado Buffaloes, who were slotted 11th. The Arizona State Sun Devils were last, but also have a shot, and the Iowa State Cyclones (a lofty sixth) are hanging around, too.
Meanwhile, the top-three preseason favorites—the Utah Utes, Oklahoma State Cowboys and Kansas State Jayhawks—are a combined 5–16. That’s fitting in the Big 12, though.
“We said it was the deepest conference, the most parity,” says Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, attending his second Colorado game Saturday. “We talked about the month of November being pretty magical because of so many different scenarios. When you think about how many schools are in contention for the championship right now, and who’s going to end up in Arlington on that first weekend in December, it’s playing out just as we had hoped. It’s playing out with different schools being at the top, but still playing out with respect to depth and parity because every game matters.”
The Cougars understand better than most, using up all of their nine lives to get into a position where the whispers of the 1984 national championship season started to grow louder. When BYU needed a key interception or momentum-swinging special teams play, it always seemed to dig deep enough to pull one out.
Against the Jayhawks, the magic ran out. With 14:07 left on a rapidly dwindling clock and clinging to a three-point lead, a third-down sack brought up a fourth-and-14 from the Cougars 36-yard line. After a timeout to discuss the potential game-changing play, KU trotted out its offense to feign going for it, only for quarterback Jalon Daniels to swiftly boot a ball that had a good trajectory of being a coffin corner punt out of nowhere.
Instead of bouncing off of the numbers and going out of bounds, it grazed cornerback Evan Johnson’s helmet on the way down as a receiver took him near the end zone. BYU cornerback Jakob Robinson recognized the situation and dived after the ball to recover it, only for it to sputter out of his grasp to the awaiting arms of Kansas receiver Quentin Skinner for his third, and most important, touch of the night. Tailback Devin Neal punched it in for the go-ahead touchdown that proved the winning margin one play later.
“It’s probably a great example of what it is right now,” said Kansas coach Lance Leipold after notching back-to-back wins over ranked opponents for the first time in school history. “We talk about three to five plays that determine a game, and we can probably name the three to five in this one that were huge. That probably could have swung the game in either direction.”
Leipold knew it, too, mentioning it to the same officiating crew that saw Kansas lose a game to the Illinois Fighting Illini earlier this season thanks to not covering a muffed punt. It is a play he makes his offense practice every Thursday during the season dating back to his first days as a head coach at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater and one he used “only three” times before, he said.
On Saturday, though, it worked at the precise moment it needed to.
“That’s what you need to win,” a euphoric Neal said after scoring both of Kansas’s touchdowns to go along with 52 rushing yards. “Especially in this conference.”
The victory importantly keeps the Jayhawks’ bowl-bid hopes alive for another week. In doing so, they also set up what amounts to a Big 12 and CFP elimination game next week for BYU at Arizona State—and significantly raise the stakes at Arrowhead Stadium when the Buffaloes’ traveling road show comes to town.
“We’ve got to tighten some things up and get some things together, but we’re trending in the right direction,” said Colorado coach Deion Sanders, satisfied but not totally happy with a convincing 49–24 win over Utah that was a few bounces away from being a much closer result. “I’m so thankful because it seems as though the goal is getting better and better and better, because we’re so focused and dedicated on getting better week to week. Not looking down the street, but week to week.”
Such a weekly grind of quality results has been a big reason why Colorado has slowly, perhaps too slowly, risen up the rankings amid a current four-game win streak that put control of its Big 12 (and College Football Playoff) fate firmly in its hands. It’s a turnaround that isn’t stunning given that the Buffs have elite talent on what might be the conference’s best roster. But it is held back from the residue that still blankets the program after going from sensational Cinderella story last season into a 3–9 laughingstock.
Two losses by mid-October this year largely pushed the Buffs off the national radar. Now they’re back on it and winning big, routinely and expectedly the way a real contender would.
Look no further than a moment midway through the fourth quarter against the Utes. The 56,646 fans who made up the largest crowd at Folsom Field in 19 years took time away from what was becoming a routine blowout to sing “Happy Birthday” to the program’s biggest supporter, Peggy Coppom. Moved to tears when shown on the video boards, the Boulder mainstay who has seen the memorable heights of Colorado football back in the 1990s (to say nothing of recent lowlights), will celebrate her 100th birthday Tuesday and can likely count on Coach Prime stopping by her party Sunday to dole out another warm hug.
In past years for the black and gold, the heartwarming rendition may have served as a season highlight—the kind of thing that closes out an end-of-the-year banquet. In 2024, it’s merely a footnote after crossing the eight-win mark for just the second time in two decades.
The good news is Sanders has already delivered Coppom the present she requested at the beginning of the season: a bowl bid. However, a trip to the Big 12 championship game also is in the offering. Win that, and “Miss Peggy’s” bowl game may well be a home playoff game—if not a trip to the Fiesta Bowl to ring in the new year.
“We’re happy with where we are, but we know where we can be,” Sanders said. “You see the mistakes, you see the little things we can clean up. But when you look at the statistics, you say, ‘Dang, that was phenomenal.’ ”
You would find no argument from the Utes, who were picked to win the Big 12 but slipped to 1–6 in their new conference after another lackluster offensive outing. They were held to their fewest rushing yards (31) in 13 years against a much improved Colorado defense and inexplicably turned the ball over four times.
On the flip side, against a Utah outfit that was the Big 12’s top scoring defense, quarterback Shedeur Sanders flushed an interception on the first play of the game to finish with 340 yards and three touchdowns. He became the first Buffs signal-caller to record multiple 3,000-yard passing seasons and has thrown at least one touchdown in 46 straight games—one of the longest streaks in Division I history. Even Colorado’s somewhat anemic run game got going, with Isaiah Augustave’s 37-yard touchdown run improbably the program’s longest scoring run since 2018.
Of course, all involved took a backseat to Travis Hunter, the only person capable of producing highlight-reel plays at a clip commensurate with the number of cameras floating around the most jam-packed sideline in college football.
The Heisman Trophy front-runner flashed the requisite stiff-arm pose after recording an interception off a fortuitous tip from teammate Colton Hood and quite literally did it all across 132 snaps at wide receiver and cornerback. He recorded his first career rushing touchdown in the fourth quarter, taking what was supposed to be a reverse pass to his quarterback from the 20-yard line right through the heart of the Utah defense and over the goal line.
To think that may have been only the second-best play he made Saturday says plenty. Should he make it to New York in a month, it’s a fair bet you’ll be seeing a loop of Hunter’s aerobatic reception between a pair of defenders in the first half that helped convert a fourth-and-8 and set up the first of two touchdowns to senior Will Sheppard that signaled this would be a one-sided affair between the former Pac-12 rivals.
Colorado later noted Hunter became the first FBS or NFL player in 24 years to record 50-plus receiving yards, a rushing touchdown and an interception in the same game. No wonder he’s being labeled a unicorn by far more than the dozens of pro scouts flocking to Boulder this season.
“That’s a great football team. Coach Sanders has done a great job putting that team together,” Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that’s the best team we’ve played this year.”
It’s interesting that the second-longest tenured coach in the sport would say that given he played his alma mater, BYU, the week prior. That Holy War ended in a controversial finish that those in red are still moaning about a week later, dismissing the Cougars’ knack for coming up big when the moment mattered most.
Seven days later, however, BYU found itself knowing all too well what that feels like, coming up on the other side of the coin as the Cougars entered the twilight zone that is each and every Big 12 contest.
The good news is not all bad omens and losses can linger. There’s still a chance the Cougars get back to their winning ways and represent the conference in the CFP. The same can be said for a bunch of others, who are buying into the idea that every contest is there for the taking.
“We haven’t even played our best game. That, in itself, should be scary,” Sanders said. “When I said we coming, we’re still coming. We never stopped coming. We’re coming, and we aren’t nearly there yet.”
Is that an omen? In the Big 12, it might as well be.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as In the Big 12, Parity Reigns Among College Football Playoff Contenders.