Last Time the Big 12 Won a College Football National Championship

The last college football national championship won by a Big 12 team came at the end of the 2005 season.

Vince Young and Texas outdueled USC in a BCS championship showdown that is often called the greatest game in modern college football history.

The Big 12 couldn’t have known how the sport would reshape itself over the following 20 years – often in ways that disadvantaged the shifting midwestern conference. 

Big 12 National Championship History (College Football)

The Big 12 is a young conference. It’s always been something of a marriage between teams that might not otherwise play together, even back to its founding. It was created for the 1996 season as a merger between the Big Eight and the Texas-heavy Southwest Conference. 

Texas and Oklahoma were the main power brokers, though Nebraska was at its apex just as the Big 12 was forming.

All three programs – plus Texas A&M and Missouri – have since left the Big 12 for more powerful conferences. 

The Big 12 is still acknowledged as a power conference, as it should be. And it’s still quite strong in other sports, like basketball and baseball. 

But the future of the conference as a football power, specifically one that can compete at the top for national championships, is cloudy. 

It’s been 20 years since the Big 12 has won a national title in college football; no other conference has gone more than 10. 

Big 12 College Football National Championships