Kansas State brings back its best player and hands the keys to a program legend. Cincinnati is starting over at quarterback after its guy blew up his own draft stock. Friday night in the Queen City should tell us a lot fast.
Bush’s Picks
KSUCIN
KSUCIN
OverUnder
Best BetKansas State
Kansas State enters with the one thing Cincinnati can't claim: a proven, healthy starting quarterback and no coaching transition drama at the position. Avery Johnson's continuity under a new staff is a real edge over a Bearcats team replacing its QB in the middle of an offseason scandal. Back the Wildcats to win this one outright.
Kansas State
+Avery Johnson returning, no QB competition at all
+Favorable schedule skips Texas Tech and BYU
+New coach Collin Klein brings instant credibility
−Lost 30-plus players to the transfer portal
−New coordinators mean scheme uncertainty for Klein
−Coming off a middling 6-6 season overall
Cincinnati
+Preseason All-Big 12 linemen Cotton and Tengesdahl return
+Aggressive, experienced transfer class brought in
−Starting QB Sorsby gone amid a gambling scandal
−Replacement QB unconfirmed with no Power 4 starts
−Collapsed with 6 straight losses to end 2025
This one's a study in contrasts at the most important position on the field. Avery Johnson is back under center for Kansas State after a 2025 season that saw him throw for 2,385 yards and 18 touchdowns while adding 8 more scores on the ground. There's no quarterback competition here — Collin Klein, the K-State legend now running the show after Chris Klieman's retirement, gets to build his first season around a proven dual-threat starter. Cincinnati doesn't have that luxury. Brendan Sorsby is gone, and how he left wasn't pretty.
Sorsby entered the portal in December, had a Texas Tech deal reportedly worth over $5 million, then admitted in May to placing more than $90,000 in bets, including wagers on his own team. The NFL denied him entry into the supplemental draft. That's left Cincinnati scrambling at the position, with reporting pointing toward Georgia Southern transfer JC French IV as the presumptive answer — unofficial and unconfirmed until fall camp actually settles it. Scott Satterfield is back for another year, but after Cincinnati opened 7-1 in 2025 before dropping 6 straight to close the year, there's no shortage of people wondering how much rope he has left.
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KSU Kansas State
CIN Cincinnati
Both rosters look different than they did last fall. Kansas State lost more than 30 players to the portal, including its top wide receiver, three running backs, and a 162-tackle linebacker, while Cincinnati leaned hard into the portal itself, bringing in a transfer class with a reported 300-plus combined career starts. It's the kind of roster churn that makes early-season Big 12 games genuinely hard to project — new pieces, new coordinators on both sidelines, and neither program has played a real snap with this cast.
Kansas State Wildcats
Sep 19?vs Tulane—
Sep 12?vs Washington State—
Sep 5?vs Nicholls—
Cincinnati Bearcats
Sep 19?vs Miami (OH)—
Sep 12?vs Western Carolina—
Sep 5?vs Boston College—
Recent form.
K-State's Athlon preseason ranking of No. 31 nationally puts it ahead of most of the Big 12's middle class, helped by a 2026 slate that conveniently skips projected contenders Texas Tech and BYU. Cincinnati doesn't get that benefit of the doubt — ESPN slotted the Bearcats 14th out of 16 in the conference, and that's before accounting for the quarterback uncertainty. The one bright spot up front for Cincinnati is real: linemen Joe Cotton and Evan Tengesdahl both made the preseason All-Big 12 team, giving whoever lines up at quarterback at least a functional pocket to work with.
Kansas State Wildcats
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Fully healthy — no injuries on ESPN's report
Cincinnati Bearcats
(0)
Fully healthy — no injuries on ESPN's report
Injury report — info via ESPN.
K-State has the head coach with something to prove and the quarterback continuity to make an immediate push in Klein's debut season. Cincinnati is the wild card — a team that looked like a Big 12 contender for two months last year before completely falling apart, now betting on a portal quarterback nobody's seen play a Power 4 snap. History leans Kansas State's way too; the Wildcats have won 3 of the last 7 meetings and blew out the Bearcats 41-15 the last time these two played, in November 2024. Friday's game in Cincinnati won't settle who's building the better program long-term, but it'll be an early gut-check for both new-look rosters.
