Mountaineers Picked to Finish 8th in Big 12 Preseason Poll

It does not look like the media is expecting a big jump out of Neal Brown and the Mountaineers in 2020 after a 5-7 first season at WVU, as West Virginia was picked to finish eighth in the Big 12 Football Media Preseason Poll, released on Friday.

Oklahoma was picked to finish first for the fifth consecutive season with 80 first-place votes. Oklahoma State (six) and Texas (four) also received first-place votes in second and third place, respectively. Iowa State was picked fourth, Baylor fifth, TCU sixth and Kansas State seventh. The bottom three were WVU at eighth, Texas Tech at ninth and Kansas at tenth.

The Mountaineers finished last season with a 3-6 conference record, putting them in a tie for seventh place with TCU. The only teams with worse conference record last season were also the only two teams picked below WVU in the preseason poll, Texas Tech and Kansas.

The Sooners have finished atop the conference in each of the last five seasons, and have won all three Big 12 Championship games since its reintroduction in 2017. The last non-Oklahoma team to win the Big 12 was TCU in 2014 and the last non-Oklahoma team to win the Big 12 Championship game was Texas in 2009.