The Big 12's big draft in 2023

The Big 12 just had their best draft in over a decade. Why?

In the year 2011, the Big 12 had 30 players selected in the draft. There were eight players from the conference taken in the first round alone and another two in the second.

That was pretty normal for the league at the time, although it was a little better than average. They averaged about 28 picks per year and routinely had a presence in the early rounds. Then something changed.

Nebraska, Texas A&M, Missouri, and Colorado all left the league and were replaced by TCU and West Virginia. The league also soon saw the end of Mack Brown’s Texas Longhorns, replaced by Charlie Strong and Tom Herman in turn, neither of whom matched the program’s heights of the 2000’s when they were cranking out talents.

Amidst those factors, the league’s talent output cropped significantly. Here’s the last 10 years of draft results for the Big 12 Conference:

Quite the surge for the league in this 2023 draft.

Obviously this will likely change when Texas and Oklahoma leave and are replaced by Cincinnati, UCF, BYU, Houston, and probably a few Pac-12 programs in the future. That’ll be a lot to shake out. But in the meantime, why was this year so uniquely strong for the league?

Was it the addition of the transfer portal? A change in tactics around the league? I went pick by pick and investigated the Big 12’s 2023 selections to try and determine if there was a primary reason for the sudden uptick in NFL talent.