Big 12 Win Totals: KU Earning Validation With Vegas – 86 Days Until Kansas Football

Oddsmakers have set the expectation for the Jayhawks at reaching a bowl game.

© Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

We’re three months away from the season starting, but oddsmakers in Las Vegas have already set the benchmark for where they see the Big 12 playing out this year, including a potentially surprising total for the Kansas Jayhawks.

A few weeks ago, DraftKings released its over/under win totals for each team in the conference – remember that the league will have 14 teams this year with the newcomers of Houston, BYU, Cincinnati, and UCF coming in and Texas and Oklahoma still a year away from joining the SEC.

Here’s how DraftKings projects the odds of each team:

Big 12 2023 win total over/under

Oklahoma 9.5

Texas 9.5

Kansas State 8.5

Baylor 7.5

Texas Tech 7.5

TCU 7.5

UCF 6.5

Kansas 6.5

Oklahoma State 6.5

BYU 6

Iowa State 5.5

Cincinnati 4.5

Houston 4.5

West Virginia 4.5

That’s right, DraftKings is setting the line of expectation for the Kansas Jayhawks at making a bowl game. And only six of the 14 teams are expected to finish better than the Jayhawks. This is huge considering the projections just a season ago:

Big 12 2022 win total over/under

Oklahoma 9.5

Oklahoma State 8.5

Texas 8

Baylor 7.5

Iowa State 6.5

Kansas State 6.5

TCU 6.5

Texas Tech 5.5

West Virginia 5.5

Kansas 2.5

No other program in the conference has made the type of one-year jump that Kansas has. Granted, no one else had as much room to grow as KU, but a four-game jump year-over-year is a huge testimony to what Lance Leipold and the staff have done already. Predicting a one or two-game increase from one season to the next is seen as validation that the team is heading in the right direction. So it’s safe to assume that validation is capped with an exclamation point given the confidence in Vegas. After KU found itself projected at the bottom of the Big 12 standings nearly every year, it is now smack dab in the middle of the conference.

The Jayhawks aren’t the only legacy team in the conference that oddsmakers like to improve. Texas Tech and Kansas State are projected to be better by two games, while Texas’ number is set at 1.5 games higher than 2022. Meanwhile, Cincinnati is expected to take a hit with Luke Fickell leaving and Iowa State, Oklahoma State, and West Virginia are projected to be worse than they were a season ago.

But this is uncharted territory for KU in the 2020s (and 2010s, for that matter). The Jayhawks are getting a level of respect that hasn’t been felt since Todd Reesing was under center, with some media sites including the Jayhawks in their too-early preseason top-25 poll. It’s understandable why, given all the production that is coming back and the other reasons for optimism.

Whether Kansas will again exceed expectations and increase the hype is still to be determined. But Vegas excels at telling the story, and for KU, the narrative is changing in a hurry and in the right direction. 

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