The Cowboys have new coaches, new players and on Tuesday, they got their new schedule.

The Big 12 released its schedule on Tuesday, giving Oklahoma State dates for its nine league games. Here is the schedule in full and four thoughts on it.

1. A Great Way to Rack Up Miles

The Cowboys have five road games in 2025, and only two of those are within a 10-hour drive from Stillwater.

One thing I’ve learned in traveling to most of the Cowboys’ games over the past five or so years is that there is a solid contingent of orange-clad fans that follows the Cowboys all over — from Tempe to Orlando to Provo and everywhere in between. This year, that group will have to trek to Eugene, Oregon (2,000 miles away). Then the Cowboys play Arizona in Tucson about a month later (about 1,000 miles away).

OSU’s trip to Lubbock used to be one of the longer road trips in the old Big 12, but it’s one of the Cowboys’ shorter journeys nowadays — about a six-hour drive and 400 miles from Stillwater. By the time OSU plays Kansas on Nov. 1, the four-hour drive between Stillwater and Lawrence will feel like a breeze.

The Cowboys close their road schedule with a trip to Orlando. As a borderline Disney adult, I won’t complain about the 1,300-mile trek to The City Beautiful, but that’ll be the third time OSU fans who want to travel will likely have to book a flight. There are worse places to go than Oregon, Arizona and Florida, but nonetheless, that’s a lot of travel.

2. OSU’s Toughest Stretch

The Cowboys play four games between Oct. 25 and Nov. 22. Three of those are on the road, and all four look to be against some fairly solid competition.

It starts with an Oct. 25 trip to Texas Tech. The Red Raiders have the No. 3 transfer portal class in the country, according to 247Sports, as money doesn’t appear to be much of an issue in Lubbock.

Then OSU will head to Lawrence on Nov. 1 for a game against the Jayhawks. KU went 5-7 in 2024, but it was a funky year considering the Jayhawks couldn’t play in their own stadium as it underwent renovations. The Jayhawks also got a big boon in early December when Jalon Daniels announced he’d be back for 2025.

The Cowboys will then get a much-deserved bye week after seven straight weekends of games before hosting Kansas State on Nov. 15. That will be the first game in BPS in nearly a month. The Cowboys beat K-State at home in 2023, but across the teams’ past three meetings, the Wildcats have outscored OSU a combined 111-49.

This tough stretch concludes with a trip to Orlando to play UCF. Will UCF be any good in Year 1 of Scott Frost’s return? I don’t know, but the last time the Cowboys played in Orlando, they lost 45-3.

3. It’s Hard to Tell Which Weekend Will be the Most Hyped

The Big 12 has been a league built on parity for a while now, but here lately, it has felt a little extra impossible to predict.

So, as I was glancing through the full Big 12 schedule looking for hyped matchups, it was tough because who the heck knows how good any of these teams are going to be? The past five seasons have seen eight (of a possible 10) different teams play in the Big 12 title game (OSU and Iowa State the only repeats). Look no further than last year, where Arizona State was picked last in the league and won it, and OSU and Utah were picked to contend and finished with a combined conference record of 2-16.

If I had to pick a most-exciting conference weekend here in February, I’d go with the weekend of Oct. 18. For OSU, that’s homecoming against Cincinnati. Elsewhere in the league, reigning Big 12 champs Arizona State will host Texas Tech, a team that has hammered the portal this offseason. There are also two big rivalry games. The Holy War gets its second Big 12 edition after the first ended with the Utah AD taking to the podium to berate the officials last season. Then there’s the Revivalry (which the Big 12 is trying to rename to the Bluebonnet Battle) between TCU and Baylor. But come middle of the September, the entire perception about teams in the conference could shift, and all of a sudden, we’ll be tracking games for UCF and West Virginia or something. The Big 12 is just so unpredictable, which is fun during the season but makes schedule release day feel like a big guessing game.

4. Way-Too-Early Record Prediction: 6-6

As previously stated, predicting the Big 12 in February is silly. On top of that, OSU has a team filled almost entirely with new players and coaches. But, let’s give it a try anyway.

The safe nonconference prediction would be 2-1. That trip to Oregon looked tough when it was scheduled, and given how last season went for both teams, it seems even tougher now.

The first half of OSU’s Big 12 slate seems manageable. The portal can change a lot from one year to the next, but OSU’s first four Big 12 opponents in 2025 had a combined record of 21-28. And three of those first four conference games are at home. OSU played only one of those teams in 2024 in Baylor. Although Baylor won that game 38-28, it was a game the Cowboys were competing in, even with how poor the Pokes played last season. So, if OSU comes out of that stretch with two wins, you’d probably feel alright (that would already be two more conference wins than the Cowboys had last season). If OSU could take three, you’d probably feel pretty good.

As we’ve already discussed, the back half of that conference schedule feels less forgiving. The teams feel tougher (again, it’s only February), and a lot of those games are on the road. But given the Big 12’s parity, so long as OSU is a better team in 2025 than it was in 2024, I could see the Cowboys scrapping out a win or two in that back half to push for bowl eligibility.