LOOK: Utah is the Betting Favorite to Win the Big 12 in 2024
Temperatures are rising quickly after Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow in Gobbler’s Knob last month, and that means spring football is in the air.
Teams from around the Big 12 will begin spring football next week, kicking off the festivities and concluding with Spring Games in April.
While the college football season won’t officially begin until August, the calendar turning over in March will kick off the annual months-long ebbs and flows of optimism and skepticism from fan bases around the country.
That also includes the beginning of betting odds for how conferences, and the sport in general, will look when a hierarchy is established for the 2024 season.
On Monday, the Big 12 got its first look at the odds for who will win the 2024 Big 12 Championship, and the initial numbers are quite interesting.
According to FanDuel, the Utah Utes (+340) are the betting favorite to win the Big 12 Championship in 2024, just edging out Kansas State (+360) with the top odds.
Lance Leipold‘s Kansas Jayhawks actually have the third-best odds of winning the title at +650, which is a testament to just how far the program in Lawrence has come under its current leadership.
Arizona (+750) and Texas Tech (+850) round out the top five teams on the board, but there are some very interesting teams after that. Let’s take a look at the entire list:
- Utah (+340)
- Kansas State (+360)
- Kansas (+650)
- Arizona (+750)
- Texas Tech (+850)
- UCF (+1100)
- Iowa State (+1200)
- Oklahoma State (+1600)
- TCU (+1600)
- West Virginia (+1900)
- Colorado (+4000)
- Baylor (+5500)
- Cincinnati (+6500)
- Arizona State (+10000)
- BYU (+13000)
- Houston (+13000)
What immediately sticks out to me is Oklahoma State being listed with the eighth-best odds of winning the league in 2024. After finishing as the runner-up in 2023, the Pokes are set to return 21 players who started at least six games last season. Although the Cowboys won a lot of one-score games in ’23, that’s a trait of Mike Gundy-coached teams throughout the years.
The other notable part of these odds is the cliff between West Virginia and Colorado. There’s a 10-team race with good-to-decent odds of winning the league, then a huge gap, and then there are the long shots.
In a conference so unpredictable from year to year, it’s not surprising that ten teams are seen as contenders at this point. That’s what will make this race so fun to follow, and we can’t wait to see it live.
