Arizona Wildcats Predicted to Have Rude Awakening After Joining Big 12

The Arizona Wildcats have been projected and predicted to have some struggles in their first Big 12 season.

Sep 2, 2023; Tucson, Arizona, USA; Arizona Wildcats quarterback Jayden de Laura (7) celebrates a touchdown with running back Jonah Coleman (3) against the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks during the first half at Arizona Stadium. | Zachary BonDurant/USA Today / USA TODAY NETWORK

The 2024 college football season is one of major change for the Arizona Wildcats. Not only did they have to find a new head coach following Jedd Fisch left for the job at Washington, but they are also joining a new conference.

New head coach Brent Brennan has his hands full this season. He is learning a new roster of players, and implementing his system, while Arizona readies for their first season in the Big 12 following the Pac-12 becoming defunct.

The Big 12 will present new challenges for the Wildcats to overcome. New rivalries will be built as they are in one of the new mega conferences with 16 teams. With so much change occurring, it is anyone’s guess how the team will respond.

Arizona is entering the 2024 season as one of the best in the nation. They have received a preseason rank of No. 21, but Matt Brown of The Athletic is unsure that ranking will stick throughout the season.

Brown shared some predictions for the season, including which of the preseason top 25 teams won’t have a ranking next to their name when it’s all said and done. He believes five teams will drop, with one of them being the Wildcats.

“There’s inevitably going to be disappointment for a few teams in the 16-team SEC (featuring nine ranked teams) and 18-team Big Ten (six), so watch for a few angsty finishes out of those two. I’ll predict USC, Iowa, Arizona, Missouri and Kansas as five of the teams that fade from the Top 25,” Brown wrote.

The bottom five teams in the rankings notoriously change most frequently. There are currently zero G5 teams in the top 25, which will assuredly change at some point during the season.

Arizona’s spot in the top 25 being in peril does line up with some Big 12 projections that were shared by Austin Mock, also of The Athletic. Mock’s projections have the Wildcats winning an average of 7.7 games per season with a 6.7 percent chance of winning the conference.

That is tied for the fourth most wins with the Kansas Jayhawks. Their odds of winning the conference are the fourth highest. Only the Utah Utes, Kansas State Wildcats and Oklahoma State Cowboys have a higher percentage.

In a unique scheduling twist, the Wildcats are scheduled to face each other this season but it won’t count toward their conference records. It was a matchup scheduled years in advance as an out-of-conference tilt when they didn’t both call the Big 12 home.