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00:00Big 12 championship game is the first off today of our Power 4 title matchups and like
00:09we are seeing across the board, a newcomer to the league will play for a conference crown
00:14on this Saturday.
00:16That's Arizona State.
00:17Kev, I mentioned how all the newcomers are at least slightly favored in their matchups
00:22today.
00:23Arizona State opened as a favorite against Iowa State, line got up to two and a half.
00:29There has been a ton of buyback on the Cyclones who just capped off their first ever 10-win
00:36season and they've been playing football and Aims since 1895.
00:41Iowa State in search of its first ever conference championship.
00:46Where we sit right here, on the morning of conference championship Saturday, this game
00:51at AT&T Stadium is a virtual pick-em.
00:54Arizona State, minus 111 now on the money line, just three cents of difference for the
00:59Cyclones at minus 108.
01:01Will it be that competitive with a Big 12 title at stake?
01:04Well, let's put this into further perspective because that's obviously one book there.
01:07How about another book?
01:08Minus 112 Iowa State, minus 108 on Arizona State.
01:11Another one going minus 115 to the Clones and the Sun Devils at minus 105.
01:15So it looks like this morning, batters have woke up and laid it down with Iowa State here
01:20in this game, which is something I agree with.
01:22And I looked at this game a number of different ways and how do I want to approach this?
01:26Where could I find value?
01:27But it just boiled down to me liking Iowa State a little bit more.
01:31And one of the things that I was, look, it could either be a pro or con, it's on the
01:38eye of the beholder, but Rocco Bacchus coming off of the worst game he's ever played, probably
01:43in his college career.
01:45I mean his passer rating, if you know anything about how the college scale is, under 100
01:49is about as bad as you could possibly get.
01:51He was an 88.9, he completed 37% of his passes against K-State, 13 of 35 in that matchup
02:00against the Wildcats, which again, K-State has been certainly of the projected good teams,
02:06the best of that bunch this year, so you know that that's a tough group to play.
02:10The fact that they won with that type of game out of Rocco Bacchus, I think Ben, one of
02:14your better quarterbacks in the Big 12 this season, helps things out quite a bit.
02:18You don't have a fully healthy Arizona State team walking into this game either, with Tyson,
02:22their star wide receiver, out for the foreseeable future.
02:26We don't know if it's an Aiden Hutchinson type, hey I'll be back for a championship
02:29game type thing, but he's out for the foreseeable futures there.
02:32I think that helps the Cyclones.
02:33And here's the other one, and it's not a slight, Kenny Dillingham, but I will take Matt Campbell
02:39in the game.
02:40I think Dillingham has been awesome for Arizona State, what he's done quickly at the program,
02:45I've seen the praises on this desk of Dion, you could probably sing them louder for Kenny
02:50Dillingham, because he doesn't have maybe the first and second NFL draft picks on his
02:53roster, right?
02:54Oh, he certainly doesn't have that on his roster this year, and he sits there 10-2 within
02:58the Big 12, so I like Dillingham a lot, but Matt Campbell I think is a little bit more
03:04battle tested.
03:05He's played in these games before, the PlayStation Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl I believe it was, I
03:08think it was the PlayStation Bowl against Oregon where he got that win, and he's been
03:12battling within the Big 12 with top teams for a very long time, he's just been doing
03:15it a lot longer than Dillingham.
03:17The Clones in search of that first conference championship, they did play in the Big 12
03:21title game in the 2020 season and did lose to Oklahoma.
03:25Rocco Beck has been inefficient at times, but he's put up a lot of yardage, and he's
03:30got a pair of wide receivers as good as you will find in this conference and in the sport,
03:35in both Jaden Higgins and Jalen Noel, 20 FBS players, Kev, have caught for more than 1,000
03:41receiving yards this year.
03:42These are the only pair of teammates to both go over that 1,000-yard marker, Higgins and
03:48Noel.
03:49Jordan Tyson, ASU's top target, also in that category of more than 1,000, in fact, one
03:55more yard, more than 1,100, he was injured in the regular season finale against Arizona
04:00in that second half of the Territorial Cup, he is out indefinitely as we share this week.
04:06But a moment for Kenny Dillingham, because we talked about the newcomers in their conference
04:10championship games in some spots, still all booked as a favorite.
04:15SMU unlikely, they were tied for the sixth best place to win the ACC before the year
04:20got underway.
04:21They were one of the few teams in this reshuffling of conference realignment that jumped up a
04:25level from a group of five conference to a power league.
04:30Arizona State moved from the Pac-12 to the Big 12, but the Sun Devils were picked dead
04:34last in the preseason media poll after a three-win season in Dillingham's first year as the
04:40head coach in Tempe.
04:42You see that price, Kev, plus $12,000 for ASU to win a Big 12 championship, second longest
04:50number in the conference entering the season.
04:52Arizona State is 10-2, and they have covered in every victory this season.
04:56So this is what I am battling with a little bit when it comes to the Big 12, whether it's
05:02fair or spot on.
05:04But clearly the issue that the Big 12 has had is their standings are flipped on the
05:10head.
05:11Like if I were to read these standings to you, Ben, right?
05:14Oklahoma State first, Arizona second, UCF third, Utah fourth, preseason, you go, no
05:19doubt.
05:20Yeah.
05:21Yeah.
05:22That's last, second, last, third, left, fourth.
05:23Like that, it doesn't make any sense.
05:24If I would have said, hey, the worst four teams, Arizona State, Iowa State, BYU, Colorado,
05:27you go, wow, bad year for Iowa State.
05:30But the rest of that all checks out.
05:33The flipping of, the nature of this conference being flipped on its head is why they are
05:38so far back within the rankings this year.
05:41It is why they are only getting in because of an outright bid, because Arizona State's
05:47the type of team, or Iowa State's the type of team, well, Arizona State more specifically,
05:51but it's the type of team that is only ranked because, you know, hey, we lasted long enough
05:56to kind of get here.
05:58Is that fair to the Big 12?
06:03Yeah.
06:04Yeah.
06:05Yeah.
06:06Yeah.