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ARLINGTON, Texas — BYU will make its first visit to Big 12 football media days in the Lone Star state this week as one of four new members to the 14-team conference, so we thought it might help to have a guide for the new landscape.
Fortunately, we know just the guy.
Berry Tramel is viewed as something of an elder statesman among Big 12 media, an Oklahoma Hall-of-Fame sportswriter who has covered the conference since the original Big 8 merged with remnants of the old Southwest Conference.
He's even been around since … well, slightly before that, as well.
"The very first Oklahoma football game I covered, OU played Iowa, and the Hawkeyes had a redshirt freshman safety named Bob Stoops who was trying to tackle Billy Sims," Tramel recounted on ESPN radio in Utah County, referring to the former longtime Oklahoma head coach. "That was 1979. This will be my 44th football season."
Tramel will be a veteran voice at Big 12 media days Wednesday and Thursday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, and he's seen plenty of new programs, even before BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF. So which one will make the biggest impression in the 14-team league?
That will be one of the storylines for the upcoming 2023 football season as coaches and players open "talking season," with every word broadcast live on ESPNU and ESPN+.
Here are a few things we'll be watching at Jerry's World upon the departure of BYU's maiden voyage in what Tramel calls a "kooky league," filled with parity and wacky finishes.
Is Texas back?
The Longhorns were crowned the preseason favorite to win the league in their final year before joining the Southeastern Conference.
Texas returns an experienced squad with 16 starters from last year's 8-5 campaign — including quarterback Quinn Ewers, who threw for 2,177 yards and 15 touchdowns with six interceptions as a freshman in 2022 before top recruit Arch Manning joined him in burnt orange.
Can former BYU quarterback Steve Sarkisian, who is 59-47 in 10 years as a head coach and just 13-12 in two years in Austin, finally lead UT to its first conference title since 2009?
Tramel isn't holding his breath.
"If Texas doesn't win this year, they're never going to win it," he said. "They've been such an underperforming program since 2009, and it's not like they were tearing up the conference before that. … Can they rise up and win it on the way out?"
Which Big 12 newcomer will have the most success?
Only one team of the four newcomers to the league was projected to finish inside the top eight in a poll of Big 12 media, and it wasn't BYU, Cincinnati or Houston.
UCF collected 463 votes in its first preseason Big 12 poll, and the Knights have been trending upward after finishing 18-9 in the first two seasons under Gus Malzahn.
Ole Miss transfer John Rhys Plumlee is one of several transfer quarterbacks in the Big 12 (more on that in a moment), and while most don't expect him to win the league, the 63% passer a year ago should be good enough to keep UCF near the top half of the table, which may be more than some other newcomers can say.
"I just think they had a pretty strong talent base, and they did a good job in the portal," Tramel said. "Gus Malzahn brought in some eight transfers from Power Five schools. And UCF the last 3-4 years has not been the UCF we saw before that under Scott Frost and Josh Heupel. But I think Cincinnati and Houston are a long way away, especially after Cincinnati got whacked by Luke Fickell's departure. They're both rebuilding."
How will BYU adapt to the Power Five?
Assuming the Cougars get off to a 2-0 start against FBS newcomers Sam Houston State and FCS foe Southern Utah, BYU should be in strong contention to make a bowl game in its first year in the league, per many projections.
The Cougars were picked to finish 11th in the conference in their first season, but the venerated scribe thinks that's too low of a prediction.
How low? That's to be determined.
"To me, BYU is sort of the mystery team," Tramel said. "They were picked 11th in the conference. I'm guessing that's too low; I would have the Cougars higher than that, but I think Brigham Young will have the least transition to Big 12 football. The Cougars have been playing 5-6 Power Five opponents a year, they've played half the Pac-12 (most years); I don't think they have a big adjustment period.
"It will be new to them, and Kalani and his staff are a little bit curious about what it will take and how they match up. Brigham Young has such a long, proud and consistent history that they don't really get rocked by too much."
Which new QB is most Big 12 ready?
Kedon Slovis will spend his final season of eligibility at BYU as a fifth-year graduate transfer after stops at USC and Pitt. But the 10,000-yard passer isn't the only transfer quarterback in the Big 12.
Far from it.
Ewers and Kansas' Jalon Daniels are two of the most experienced returning quarterbacks in the league, along with former UCF signal caller Dillon Gabriel (now at Oklahoma), one-time OU quarterback Chandler Morris (now at TCU) and West Virginia's Garrett Greene, who leads the last place-picked Mountaineers.
But the league is also flush with new names in arguably the sport's most important position: from Slovis at BYU to Florida/Arizona State's Emory Jones at Cincinnati to Oklahoma State's Alan Bowman, who moved over from Texas Tech (via Michigan).
The portal can be a double-edged sword, but positives are just as common as negatives.
"I think it's really important to get the right guys," Slovis said. "Do they fit what you do, fit the culture, work hard, are team players? I've seen it work both ways. … I think you can make it good, and it can hurt you as well."
Is the Big 12 done expanding?
Conference expansion always rears its head this time of year, from coast-to-coast, but the league, rocked most recently by the defections of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC, will have plenty to say about the next go-around.
Ever since Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark announced the league was "open for business" during his first summer presiding over the league, his conference has been seen as a hunter in the ever-expanding carousel of college football musical chairs after securing a media rights future with ESPN and FOX through the end of the decade.
That won't change Wednesday, with Yormark set to deliver a state of the conference address after public declarations of "exploring" conversations with a number of schools, from UConn in the northeast to San Diego State on the west coast to Gonzaga as a non-football member.
And of course, there's the reported top prize for Yormark's stated goal of a conference spanning all four time zones: the so-called Four Corners schools of Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
"That's a never-ending story here, and I'm sure even moreso in a place like Salt Lake," Tramel said.
