Big 12 Update

Well here we go. Three teams remaining in the race for the Big 12 football championship with two games remaining. This should be fun. Baylor, Kansas State and TCU are all tied for first place with 6-1 records. All three are favored this week with TCU having the toughest test in heading to Austin Thursday to face the Longhorns. While I still cannot get over the absence of Texas A&M on UT's schedule for Thanksgiving week, I would expect Texas to be fired up nonetheless. Texas has won three straight in convincing fashion to become bowl eligible. They also swamped the Horned Frogs 30-7 last year in Lubbock, something TCU has not forgotten. TCU has a lot riding on this game and will need a full effort to beat a Texas team that is looking to keep up their good play of late. Baylor and Kansas each have opponents that will certainly want to play spoiler in rivals Teas Tech and Kansas, but even playing closely will be surprising. The key for both teams is staying healthy as they have to play each other in the finale in Waco on December 6. TCU meanwhile finishes with Iowa State in Lubbock so, unless there is a major surprise, each of the three teams remaining in the Big 12 race have one more tough game. But let's see what happens. As for the rest of the conference, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia are probably the only other teams to be bowl eligible this year. The Sooners have a shot at ten wins and should be focused on whipping rival Okie State, who is reeling, and then wining their bowl game. Texas is all about building momentum for year two under Charlie Strong, while West Virginia needs to continue the good play this season as they look to contend next year. An expected win Saturday over Iowa State and then a bowl win will give the Mountaineers eight wins for the season which would double last year's total. The other four? Play the kids, play hard and give yourselves something to build on.

Big 12 Update

With the Big 12 neatly divided between five haves, four of whom are ranked with the other (Texas) knocking on the door, and five have nots, all of whom sport losing records, there is usually at least one compelling match-up each week. With Baylor and Oklahoma off this week preparing for each other, and Texas facing a poor Kansas team, we have one game to watch Saturday in Texas Tech-Oklahoma State. Basically a conference title elimination game, this match-up will send the loser into fifth place with two losses and time running out. While both teams have had good seasons they are not without flaws. Texas Tech turns the ball over like a basement-level team and commits too many penalties. They also can become too pass happy. Okie State has had surprisingly poor QB play and has been mediocre to poor road team over the past couple of seasons. Since crushing the Red Raiders in Lubbock in 2011, 66-6, the Cowboys are 3-6 on the road with wins against KU, Texas-San Antonio and Iowa State. I like the Red Raiders slightly but will probably pass.

Big 12 Update

Proof that the state of things in college football is ever changing can be seen in the Big 12 this weekend as there are two matchups of Top 25 teams and neither features either Oklahoma or Texas.  The game getting the most hype will display two Heisman contenders at QB as Kansas State travels to West Virginia for a Saturday night clash.  The teams have not played each other since 1931 and, well, times have changed. Both squads are averaging more than 40 points per game but they each do that in drastically different fashion.  While the high-powered West Virginia attack gets the most ink, with QB Geno Smith already sitting on 2,271y and an unbelievable 25-0 TD-INT ratio, the KSU attack may hold the key to the game. QB Collin Klein cannot pass like Smith, nor Texas Tech's Seth Doege, who carved up West Virginia last week, but he can keep his offense on the field through his gritty, powerful running.  Klein has already rushed for 510y and 10 TDs and will be the focus of a beleaguered Mountaineer stop unit.  He will, however, need to pass too as the West Virginia secondary has been torn to shreds by most everyone they play. But becoming pass happy is not coach Bill Snyder's style and we can expect the Cats to be balanced. The Wildcats have already enjoyed a huge night road win in conference this season, in Norman last month, and are now 5-1 on the road in the conference since the start of last season.  The pick here is KSU in a close one.
The other big-time clash in conference will take place Saturday afternoon when TCU hosts Texas Tech.  Both teams stand at 5-1 but as I have said before the pressure is squarely on a Horned Frogs team that may not be favored in any game the rest of the season.  The Horned Frogs may have to win this one the old fashioned way, playing strong defense and keeping the offense simple and error-free.  With new starting QB Trevone Boykin at the helm expect a conservative offensive plan.  Head coach Gary Patterson has pulled off such a win before as he beat a ranked Red Raider squad in 2006 12-3.  The visitors need to put the big win over West Virginia behind them as they will need a completely different plan to beat the Horned Frogs.  Doege has thrown 4 interceptions total in Tech's five wins but 3 against OU in the team's sole loss.  Facing an aggressive TCU front seven featuring impressive freshman DE Devonte Fields, who leads the conference in sacks with 6.5, Doege will have display his new-found maturation.  My pick is TCU.

Big 12 Round-Up

Baylor beat Texas. In Austin. I just thought that I remind everyone of that occurrence, from Saturday, as the news is slow to get out these days. Baylor last beat the Longhorns in 1997 and last beat them on the road in 1991 (Ah the Southwest Conference). And yes sir, the Bears are currently in first place in the Big 12 South by a half game over Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. And it is November. The Bears have a fine coach in Art Briles, great quarterback in Robert Griffin, nifty running back in Jay Finley and a defense that is exceeding expectations. Griffin's return from a torn ACL has gone extremely well so far as he has already thrown for 2,592y with 20 TD passes and rushed for 410y and 7 more TDs. In a conference loaded with star players, he may be the mosy dynamic. Of course two tough games await Baylor in Oklahoma State in Stillwater and Oklahoma at home (and the Bears cannot overlook Texas A&M either), but these Bears will be bowl-bound for the first time since 1994. These are heady times in Waco.

Although Nebraska and Missouri are still tied atop the Big 12 North, the Tigers will need some help due to the Cornhuskers not only owning the head-to-head tiebreaker but possessing an easier schedule the rest of the way. Still, there is plenty of football yet to be played.

Is it Finally Over?

So the Big Ten conference now has 12 programs and the Big 12 has 10. Got it? The Pac 10 can no longer brag about being the only true league with every conference member playing each other during the season as they are now too big to do so. Once the Pac 10 adds Utah, or some other fortunate soul, to be the 12th team in the conference, they will be done expanding for now. And that is good, because no one was ready for the myriad changes to the sport their expansion to 16 teams would have unleashed.

Will the Big 12 miss Colorado and Nebraska? Sure, at least competitively on the football field (well, Nebraska anyway and the basketball programs just saw their RPIs go up with the loss of two lowly programs). But considering that funeral dirges were being played moments earlier, losing two programs is a problem that can easily be solved. And as an aside, why do sports journalists love to kill off conferences before their time? They did so with the Big East too in the mid 2000s.

As far as competition goes, Boise State's move to the Mountain West may be the biggest news of all. If the conference can hold on to Utah, it will be loaded with big-time programs. Nebraska moving to the Big Ten is big too, of course, but the conference will still be under-appreciated until they can win a national title. Perhaps the Cornhuskers will help there. Penn State almost won it all in their second year of conference play. Meanwhile, Big 12 fans are warning the Huskers that they may not be able to recruit Texas as well as they did in the past, and perhaps the two or three players they lose there will find themselves on rosters of Iowa State, Missouri, Kansas and/or Kansas State, thus helping those schools too.

So the conference realignment craze is over for now. There are no super conferences and we can now, I hope, focus on the upcoming season.

Big 12 Title Game: Hit Something, Anything!

Texas quarterback Colt McCoy now admits he didn't know the rule about passes out of bounds, that is, the clock doesn't stop until a pass hits something, anything, in his case the grandstand railing at Cowboys Stadium. He thought, as many of us probably did, that all it took to stop the clock was to lob the ball over the line of scrimmage and wide of the sideline.

In last Saturday night's Big 12 Championship Game, McCoy surely was confused in the dying moments because it is easy to wonder what he was doing on the incomplete pass play that almost ended the game, cost Texas a trip to the national title game, and sent Nebraska to a BCS bowl game as conference champion. What now is this season's most famous single tick-of-the-clock was restored to the game clock, which allowed Hunter Lawrence to make a winning 46-yard field goal. The kick, which made the final score 13-12, truly got McCoy off the hook.

What was going on? McCoy, an engaging stand-up kid, needs to stand up now and admit he almost blew it, that he cut it too fine. That would be alright, Colt. Everything would be forgiven in Longhorn circles. You won. Instead, he's changing his story daily, no doubt hoping the questions will go away.

Let's review. Having just gone ahead 12-10 on Alex Henery's fourth field goal, Nebraska hurt itself by kicking off out-of-bounds. Texas had the ball, first down at its 40. McCoy hit receiver Jordan Shipley with a critical 19-yard pass to the Nebraska 41. Safety Larry Asante was called for a 15-yard penalty for a horse-collar tackle. (Texas fans can thank their old NFL pal Terrell Owens for that rule, by the way.) Texas quickly was at the Nebraska 26, first down.

Huskers defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, the best player on the field and maybe in the nation (Watch for my Heisman lineman rant here soon!), sacked McCoy for a two-yard loss. On second down from the 28, McCoy ran to the left and lost another yard. On third down, McCoy dropped back and drifted to his right rather aimlessly as the clock ticked past five-seconds-to-go. Finally, he lobbed a pop-up so far out-of-bounds it might have hit Holly Rowe or Erin Andrews, or at least put a lump on the back of the head of innkeeper Jerry Jones.

What was Texas and McCoy thinking? According to the official play-by-play report the Longhorns had one timeout left. Why didn't they run twice to get a shorter field goal, then call time-out? If McCoy knew, as he stated in the post-game interview, that Lawrence preferred to kick from the right hashmark, why did he run left on the previous play? When McCoy rolled out on his third down pass, was he trying to kill time or pass for a gain, or both, while getting to the right hashmark? We may never know, but in the end it didn't matter. Well, it did matter to "Husker Nation," which is smarting from a painful loss and smells a conspiracy.

Sunday's Omaha World-Herald didn't use a whole column worth of space but did pose the question: Is Texas the only member of the conference that would have gotten the replay review that (rightfully) restored the notorious single second?

This isn't the first conspiracy theory offered up in college football. Last year, when Texas lost out to Oklahoma—a team the Longhorns defeated—in the Big 12 South because of a technical tie-breaker, Sooner fans gloated because they beat out the conference "poster boy" that always seemed to get its way.

Whether we admit it or not, it is better business for the Big 12 when Texas makes the BCS Title Game instead of Iowa State. Down deep, Big Ten administrators would rather see Michigan make the Rose Bowl instead of Indiana. More money was spent in NASCAR in the 1980s and '90s when Dale Earnhardt won races instead of Sterling Marlin. It's the way it is. TV ratings go up when the Yankees are in the World Series and the Lakers in the NBA finals.

A few years back, I married into a Nebraska family and was pulling like crazy for the Huskers Saturday night. But I know for certain, as every Husker fan knows in their heart, the game wasn't really lost in the last second. Up 6-0 and having just blocked a punt at the Texas 37 in the second quarter, Nebraska's quarterback Zac Lee threw an end zone interception. With 13 minutes to play and the Huskers behind 10-6, Niles Paul raced a punt back 43 yards to the Longhorns 10, but the painfully weak offense had to settle for another field goal. If Paul could have eluded the last tackler, Nebraska would have been ahead 13-10. And as great as the defense played, the Black Shirts couldn't keep Texas pinned at its 1 after the next kickoff. Then there was the penalty for the kickoff out of bounds from Adi Kunalic, who otherwise was excellent on kickoffs all night. Oh, what might have been for Nebraska (9-4 in the regular season) this year, which lost three games—16-15 to Virginia Tech, 9-7 to Iowa State, and 13-12 to Texas—by a total of four points.

--Bob Boyles

Salute to the Big 12 North

Okay, perhaps salute is too strong a word. But the Big 12 North this year reminds me of a wild card baseball race involving three or four mediocre clubs all playing hard at season's end to earn a playoff spot. They are all still alive in the race, which is funny enough, and it can get even tighter after this Saturday if Kansas (1-3, 5-3) beats Kansas State (3-2, 5-4) as the Wildcats are the only division member with a conference record above .500. And Nebraska (2-2, 5-3) and Iowa State (2-3, 5-4), the only other North programs with at least two Big 12 victories, each have a tough opponent Saturday with Oklahoma and Oklahoma State respectively. The race can get even tighter if Missouri (1-3, 5-3) and Colorado (1-3, 2-6) win home games over Baylor, for the Tigers, and Texas A&M for the Buffs. It is possible to have all six schools within either a half game or full game of each other come Sunday.

Ridiculous you say? Well it is a far cry from the glory days of the Big 12 North when Nebraska, Kansas State and sometimes Colorado fielded powerhouse teams in the 1990s. Missouri and Kansas have been rebuilt of late and Iowa State has shown great progress this season. There is hope for the future for almost all of these programs. But before you decry the play of these six, remember professional sports teams, like the Phoenix Cardinals last season, that defy odds with a successful playoff run. The Big 12 North may be down now, but as long as they are playing the conference championship game in Arlington, Texas on December 5 the North representative has a shot. After all, the very first Big 12 title game featured the stunning upset by an unranked Texas squad over no. 3 Nebraska on December 7, 1996. So, dream big all you Wildcats, Tigers, Cyclones, Buffaloes, Cornhuskers and Jayhawks.

Big 12 Blues

Was it just one year ago that the Big 12 was riding high with four members of the top 10? By November the national media had cleared away any and all competition to the notion that the best of the Big 12 would meet the best of the SEC in the BCS title game. Of course choosing the best team in the conference proved problematic, but that should not have reflected too poorly on the quality of play in the Big 12 in 2008.

Things are not looking too rosy this year. Sure Texas is ranked high but do the Longhorns, especially on offense, really look like a great team? The conference’s other heavyweight, Oklahoma, sits at 3-3 with two losses outside of conference. Oklahoma State has won five of its first six games but has garnered more attention for the suspension of star WR Dez Bryant than for play on the field. They also have yet to play either Texas or Oklahoma. Texas Tech has been up-and-down this season, Texas A&M has tanked and the other Big 12 South member, Baylor, has had to deal with the loss of dynamic QB Robert Griffin. The North? The hope for Texas or Oklahoma State for that matter would have been a strong team emerging in the North to give the South winner a potential BCS boost in the conference title game. This past weekend’s action made it clear that there will be no BCS boost come December as the three leading contenders, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri all lost. Nebraska has no QB, Kansas still has a brutal remaining schedule and Missouri cannot match up with the nation’s better teams.

It seems that the bad luck from this year is payment for an unusually good 2008. The Big 12 was not as good as it seemed last year and is not as bad as it seems this year. What lies in between is a very good conference, but one that relies on too many teams with limited potential (Baylor, Texas A&M, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State). The North, which was once the dominant division in the league, must produce challengers to the throne, while the South powers need to win more national recruiting battles. Hopefully the divisional races this year can produce some fun the rest of the way.

Big 12 News

The suspension of Oklahoma State (0-0; 3-1) WR Dez Bryant is the focal point of the conference news for this week. Bryant was canned by the NCAA for lying about working out at Neon Deion’s house. With normal sports leagues I would assume that there was more to the story then it appears, with the NCAA I am not so sure. Removing Bryant from the Cowboys for something less than serious is damaging their chances as the Big 12 schedule kicks into gear. If he gets reinstated down the line, the key date is October 31 when Texas (1-0; 4-0) comes to Stillwater. With RB Kendall Hunter banged up, the explosive Cowboys are suddenly looking a bit short for Saturday’s game versus Texas A&M (0-0; 3-1).

Rain is expected to greatly affect the playing conditions for tonight’s Missouri (0-0; 4-0)-Nebraska (0-0; 3-1) game. The Cornhuskers should have the advantage in a quagmire with their strong line play on both sides of the ball and good ground game led by Roy Helu, Jr., but do not underestimate the damage to be done by all the tall receiving targets on the Missouri side of the ball. With so much riding on this match-up of Big 12 North contenders, look for the TO battle to become crucial. Missouri’s soph QB Blaine Gabbert has yet to throw a pick in his first year as starter, but he has never tangled with the likes of DT Ndamukong Suh and the rest of a fierce Husker pass rush. Gabbert is the leading side story to this game as he originally committed to Nebraska coming out of high school only to change to Missouri after Nebraska fired coach Bill Callahan. Nebraska surely could use him as they try to snap a streak of seven straight losses on the road against ranked opponents.