Alabama was the face of the SEC. Now it’s Georgia. In the Big Ten it’s long been Ohio State, and still is despite Michigan’s resurgence. The ACC? Florida State before Clemson’s decade-plus run of dominance, but the title might be swinging back to the Seminoles. In the former Pac-12, Southern Cal was by far the biggest brand.
Oklahoma, of course, was the face of Big 12 football until the Sooners officially joined the SEC on July 1, leaving a vacancy on the conference throne.
Oklahoma State has a big opportunity to seize it. To be the first program people name when they think of Big 12 football.
Obviously winning conference championships and being the “face of the conference” go hand-in-hand, but the latter is long lasting — spanning decades rather than the ebbs and flows of single seasons.
Only a handful of programs, OSU among them, have the equity to claim such a label, and whichever team wins the new-look Big 12 in Year 1 could have an outsized status advantage.
So, is there any value in being the face of the conference?
“I think we all want to have success and try to establish ourselves,” OSU coach Mike Gundy said Saturday at OSU media day. “There’s so many teams in this league now, and it’s so new …”
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Which is why it’s a ripe time for a leader to emerge, whether it’s OSU or Utah, Kansas State or TCU. Or some other school. The Big 12 doesn’t have the bluebloods of the SEC or Big Ten, or even the ACC, but it’s littered with B-listers.
“For example, two seasons ago TCU had a season that nobody would’ve predicted,” Gundy said.
The Horned Frogs became the first Big 12 team to win a College Football Playoff game.
“And then last year they didn’t fare as well as they wanted to,” Gundy said, “and nobody would’ve predicted that.”
Granted, nobody thought the Horned Frogs would make another playoff run, but they were picked to finish a solid fifth in the Big 12. TCU was even worse than that, going 3-6 and finishing tied for ninth in the Big 12.
“But TCU, when I look at them and what they have on paper, if they get good quarterback play they’re gonna be pretty good,” Gundy said.
OSU plays at TCU on Nov. 9. Not a game any of us are circling, but maybe Gundy will be proven right in his optimism for TCU, which was picked to finish 10th in the Big 12.
Utah was picked to win the league. Kansas State, OSU, Kansas and Arizona rounded out the top-five.
“So it’s hard to predict how you can establish yourself,” Gundy said. “The only thing I would say is this: From Day 1 when I was lucky enough to get this job I said that our goal, my goal personally, was to make sure that we put a product on the field, that we could fill this stadium every Saturday, and people knew if we played well we could win the game.”
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As Gundy noted, that hadn’t always been the case at OSU.
Before he got the job in 2005, OSU’s all-time winning percentage was .489. In the 19 years since, OSU’s winning percentage is .678.
“Whether we’re the face of the league, I don’t know,” Gundy said. “My goal is to put a product out there that the fans can come and enjoy their Saturday and tailgate and say, ‘You know what? We might win this game.’”
This season Gundy (102) will likely pass Bill Snyder (104) for the most Big 12 coaching wins. Bob Stoops holds the record with 121.
In Big 12 history (1996 to present), OU has the highest winning percentage in conference games (.746) followed by Nebraska (.675), Texas (.667), Kansas State (.586) and Oklahoma State (.555).
With TCU (.546), Texas A&M (.527), and Colorado (.500), those are the eight Big 12 teams, throughout its history, that have won at least half its games.
With OU and Texas gone, Kansas State has the best Big 12 winning percentage among current teams. OSU is next, then TCU, then Colorado — back for its second stint in the Big 12.
Of the legacy Big 12 members, OSU and Kansas State are best positioned to be the face of the conference. Of the newbies, only Utah has a reasonable case.
Utah had a .575 winning percentage in the Pac-12, which it joined in 2011.
Led by Kyle Whittingham, who’s been at Utah as long as Gundy has been at OSU, the Utes have won 10-plus games in three of the last five seasons. They were Pac-12 champs in 2021 and 2022.
Utah’s first-ever Big 12 game? Sept. 21 in Stillwater.
An early chance for OSU to assert control of the conference, both for this season and the future.
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Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at jmussatto@oklahoman.com. Support Joe’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State football has chance to become face of new-look Big 12
