The 2025 NFL Draft was a disappointment for BYU fans as not a single Cougar was among the 257 players selected this year.
The draft was also a disappointment for the Big 12 Conference as a whole.
Based on my own analysis of data taken from Pro Football Reference, here are the total players selected from each of the Power Four teams:
SEC - 80 (5.0 per team)
Big Ten - 71 (3.9 per team)
ACC - 41 (2.4 per team)
Big 12 - 31 (1.9 per team)
That’s not a great look for the Big 12.
BYU was among three Big 12 teams without a single player drafted, joining Baylor and Houston. Teams with just one player selected included Arizona State, Cincinnati, West Virginia, and Utah. These six schools produced just four draft picks this year.
So does this mean the talent gap between the Big 12 and other conferences is as wide as the Grand Canyon?
Nope. Not at all.
Looking at total players drafted by conference to assess the quality of talent as a whole is misleading. The SEC and Big Ten, for example, have a small number of elite teams that produce a disproportionately high number of NFL players. Once factoring out those “NFL Factory” programs, the Big 12 stacks up much more favorably.
The Impact of the four “NFL Factories”
The Big 12 is different from the SEC and Big Ten in that it doesn’t necessarily have any NFL Factories that churn out double-digit NFL draft picks every year. Talent is pretty evenly distributed across the conference. In the 2025 draft the most players drafted from any single Big 12 team was four, coming from Arizona, Colorado, Iowa State, and Oklahoma State.
The same parity in NFL talent doesn’t exist in the SEC and Big Ten.
The SEC had the most players taken in the NFL Draft with 80, but the bulk of those players came from two schools - Georgia (13) and Texas (12). When factoring out those 25 players, the remaining 14 SEC schools produced 55 NFL players, or about 3.9 per school. That’s still roughly double the Big 12’s 1.9 players drafted per school, but it narrows the gap quite a bit.
This trend is even more pronounced with the Big Ten, a conference with 18 teams that produced 71 draft picks. Ohio State led the way with an impressive 14 players drafted followed by Oregon with 10. When subtracting those two teams, the remaining 16 Big Ten teams had 47 players drafted, or 2.9 per team, or approximately one more per school than the Big 12’s 1.9.
Interestingly, in the Big Ten Illinois, Indiana, Michigan State, Nebraska, Purdue, Northwestern, Washington, and Wisconsin combined to produce just 10 draft picks in 2025 from those eight schools. The remaining 10 schools produced 61 draft picks.
Let’s also just pause here and acknowledge that 49 of the 257 players drafted - or 19% - came from just four schools in Georgia, Texas, Ohio State, and Oregon. That’s truly remarkable.
It also underscores the need to look at draft performance by conference with those four NFL Factories viewed differently.
Draft results excluding the four NFL Factories
When excluding the 49 players drafted from Georgia, Texas, Ohio State, and Oregon, here are the results of the 2025 NFL Draft by conference:
SEC - 55 (3.9 per team, excluding Georgia and Texas)
Big Ten - 47 (2.9 per team, excluding Ohio State and Oregon)
ACC - 41 (2.4 per team)
Big 12 - 31 (1.9 per team)
Overall, in 2025 the SEC and Big Ten still produced the most players drafted per team even when excluding the NFL Factories, but the gap between those two conferences and the ACC and Big 12 narrowed considerably.
It’s also important to note that this is just one year’s worth of data. It was a fluky year for BYU, for example, to have zero players drafted after 10 were selected in the four previous drafts. The same goes for Utah with just one draft pick (former BYU basketball player Caleb Lohner) after also producing 10 draft picks over the last four years.
I’m looking forward to tracking this same data over time in the coming years.
It will be interesting to see how NFL draft results by conference plays out in the near future. Many of the players drafted in 2025 committed to their teams before NIL, the transfer portal, and an expanded College Football Playoffs were in full effect.
With NIL, the transfer portal, and more equity in the college football landscape, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Big 12 perform even better against the other Power Four conferences in future NFL Drafts.
So, do the SEC and Big Ten produce more draft picks on average than the Big 12?
Yes, they do.
But they are also heavily influenced by the four NFL Factories - Georgia, Texas, Ohio State, and Oregon - and when excluding those outliers, the talent gap with the Big 12 narrows considerably.