Previewing the 2020 Big 12 football season: A Saturday Blitz Podcast

As of now, Big 12 football remains committed to playing full schedules. This week’s Saturday Blitz Podcast breaks down the fortunes of each team.

Uncertainty continues to hover over the 2020 college football season. The novel coronavirus pandemic shows little sign of dissipating, but the reactions around the college sports landscape has varied from conference to conference. The Big Ten and the Pac-12 moved to conference-only schedules, while an increasing number of FCS conferences cancel all fall sports.

Even for a conference like the Big 12, which remains committed to playing a full slate of games this year, the domino effect of these cancellations cannot be understated.

Two Big 12 programs are staring at two canceled non-conference games even without the league making its own proclamation. Four other programs have seen one game canceled off their slate. The impact of unbalanced schedules leads off the discussion in the opening segment of this week’s Saturday Blitz Podcast.

Which teams will be most impacted by the loss of non-conference opportunities? Which teams are best positioned to weather lost revenue and lost games? Most importantly, what impact will canceled games have on teams’ chances to reach bowl eligibility or compete for the biggest prizes on the national level?

After that aerial view of the conference, we shift gears in the final two segments. Looking at each team based on where they finished in the 2019 league standings, we break down how things might transpire for each Big 12 program. The second segment focuses on teams that finished in the bottom half of the standings, with the final segment looking at last year’s contenders for the conference crown.

Wrapping up this week’s discussion, we offer our projections for the final conference standings and question whether any Big 12 team has a legitimate chance to get into the College Football Playoff this year.

The Saturday Blitz Podcast is part of the FanSided Radio Network at Spreaker. The show goes live every Wednesday morning. You can reach John Mitchell at @jlmitchell93 and Zach Bigalke at @zbigalke on Twitter.