Cougs Daily

Kelley Ford Predicts a Tight Race to the Big 12 Title Game

Casey Lundquist

BYU wide receiver Chase Roberts against Arizona State
BYU wide receiver Chase Roberts against Arizona State / BYU Photo
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The college football season is inching closer. In just over a month, teams will kickoff Fall camps for the 2025 season. On Tuesday, college football analytics guru Kelley Ford projected the final Big 12 standings. Ford predicts an incredibly tight race in the Big 12.

Ford projects Kansas State to win the league by a narrow margin. He projects the top nine teams to to finish with somewhere between 4.9-6.2 conference games. BYU is projected to finish third in the league with a conference record of 5.5-3.5.

History suggest a 7-2 record in conference play will put a team in contention to play in the Big 12 title game. In Ford's projections, nobody in the league has better than a 43% chance to win seven or more games.

The takeaway? The analytics won't be able to project the winner of the Big 12 in 2025. In terms of the top of the conference, most of the best teams in the league will be similar on paper. Therefore, the teams that make the championship game will most likely be the teams that were able to win close games and win tiebreaker scenarios.

Kelley Ford Predicts 2025 BYU Football Schedule

Here are the game-by-game predictions from Ford. BYU is favored in 10 out of 12 games.

  • Portland State - 99%
  • Stanford - 88%
  • East Carolina - 81%
  • Colorado - 57%
  • West Virginia - 81%
  • Arizona - 71%
  • Utah - 61%
  • Iowa State - 47%
  • Texas Tech - 39%
  • TCU - 59%
  • Cincinnati - 65%
  • UCF - 75%

Ford gives BYU a 71% to be 3-0 heading into the conference slate. BYU's projected conference record is 5.5-3.5.

Odds of a Special Season

For the purposes of this article, we'll define a "special season" as 10 or more regular season wins. Winning 10 games would put BYU in contention for the Big 12 championship and potentially a spot in the College Football Playoff as well. Ford gives BYU a 20% chance to win 10 games or more.

1 win or more - >99%
2 wins or more >99%
3 wins or more >99%
4 wins or more - >99%
5 wins or more - 99%
6 wins ore more - 96%
7 wins or more - 88%
8 wins or more - 70%
9 wins or more - 44%
10 wins or more - 20%
11 wins or more - 6%
12 wins (undefeated) - 1%

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Casey Lundquist
CASEY LUNDQUIST

Casey Lundquist is the publisher and lead editor of Cougs Daily. He has covered BYU athletics for the last four years. During that time, he has published over 2,000 stories that have reached more than three million people.

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