After watching some of the Bama vs WVU and FSU vs OSU games I couldn’t help but think how underrated the Big 12 appears. I will say that WVU looked much more disciplined and rallied to the ball…something we haven’t seen from them in a while. OSU wasn’t a huge surprise. When I heard Trey Carter was redshirting a couple weeks back I know they must have some players on their front. Plus their DC continues to improve their recruiting and their scheme and development. I will say that I’ve never been sold on FSU. OU has just best them too soundly in the past few meetings for me to ever really take them seriously.
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Vastly underrated. The “perception” about the BIG XII is moronic and wrong-headed group-think based upon last season, OU’s past performance in bowl games, and Texas being down. If the BIG XII were a stock, I’d recommend a heavy “buy”.
Contracts and marketing are really important in the CFB world. Wonder how much it’ll play into the playoff committee’s decision
Lot of football that will happen between now and then. I already see ESPN floating the two SEC team sh*t, putting out their narrative. Would’ve helped a lot had we gotten one of those upsets but I don’t think we hurt ourselves in showing well against the #1 and #2 teams on the same weekend. Think we’ll have 4, maybe 5 top 25 teams by season’s end.
And we showed well while playing some of our medium ranked teams in the league! They weren’t playing the Sooners, or Baylor, or K state! Yet we were playing their best in in the ACC, and probably their second best in the SEC.
The fact is, 2 SEC schools had the most impressive wins in week #1, Georgia over Clemson and A&M over South Carolina. If you were picking 4 schools for the playoffs based on their body of work (which the committee will be doing) those 2 teams would be in the playoff after one week. I don’t think ESPN was promoting any “propaganda” but was just calling a spade a spade.
So you’re saying South Carolina is truly a #9 ranked team? Or, the SEC doesn’t know how to play against the spread/fast tempo offenses. You call it impressive, I call it hype.
Was that the Clemson team we saw the last two years? Not even close. Good team but they will have more loses this year.
Here’s what I KNOW. After 1 week of football, the Big 12 is 2-1 vs FCS schools (lucky not to be 1-2, but Tech pulled it out against the mighty Central Arkansas Bears), 0-1 vs ACC, 0-1 vs SEC, 2-0 vs CUSA, and 1-0 vs the AAC, with ZERO wins against Top 25 teams. The SEC is 1-0 vs ACC, 1-0 vs Big 10, 1-0 vs Big 12, 0-1 vs AAC, 2-0 vs Mountain West, 1-0 vs CUSA, and 1-0 vs FCS schools, with THREE wins vs Top 25 schools. It doesn’t take an illogical person much time to figure out which conference had the better first week of the season.
Soonerguy97, man you are right. I guess we should take our ball and go home. Big 12 should just go hide since they couldn’t win against the #1 & #3 team in the country. It’s not like WV & OSU are coming off natty’s but hey, moral victorys are for losers right?. My point is FSU & Bama don’t want to play those type of schools in a round robin all year long. Both games were on the road and Atlanta is in Bama country so not that big of a deal. I’m proud of the Big 12 and sounds like you hitched your wagon to SEC. Enjoy.
I think the conference is underrated due to every other team/conference being overrated. But those 2 performances will help ou and baylor later if both stay in the running for the big 12 title like most think they will.
SEC west really did look strong this week, its crazy to think bama is probably a top 7-8 team, and could legitimately lose 5 division games in 2014(everyone but ark, who could upset them if they played as well as they did in the 1st half vs auburn).
I dont think anyone got as much of a perception boost as the big 12 did though. if WVU dosent miss 2 FG’s, and have a stupid sideline penalty that extended what would have been a stalled bama TD drive, WVU beats the tide. Even with all their mistakes, WVU played step for step with a team with 64 4 star or higher players on it.
OSU didnt even play that amazing, and gave #1 all they could handle. Ill say it now, im a believer in tyreek hill. That kid might be the most explosive player in the nation.
OU, TCU, UT and KSU all handled their business, but lets not speak of the ISU game lol.
Big 12 looks to be quite more solid than most pundits think, while the big 10 and pac 12 werent super impressive. I think we have a case for the #2 conference after week 1.
The Big 12 could be one of the – if not THE – most interesting conference in the country.
Any team is more than capable of taking care of business, especially at home.
The last few seasons have seen a #2 Oklahoma State team knocked out of the national title picture at Iowa State in 2011; Kansas State headed for a shot to win it all, but get routed at Baylor in 2012; and Baylor steamrolling until it gets hammered at Stillwater in 2013. And that’s not to mention when OU’s had unexpected losses in conference play over the years to ruin a title shot.
For all of the talk of the strength of other conferences, you never, ever see their underdogs pull off an upset. That could happen in any week in the Big 12, so you better bring it every week – and this year seems to be no different. This is something that should be mentioned more by the national media … but it doesn’t fit the narrative.
Your last paragraph is exactly what all these tired acts will point to. The big 12 leaders must be pretenders because the sec bottom dwellers never pull those upsets. They try their precious little hearts out to say “LSU better watch out this week in starkville” and then it turns out 56-10. This is what Bob has been saying for years and none of em wanna listen(the top 2 or 3 in every conference are really good and the rest aren’t)
I seem to recall Tennessee upsetting South Carolina last season, and Vanderbilt upsetting Georgia. Those are SEC bottom feeders upsetting teams that are at/near the top of the conference.
The Georgia-Vanderbilt game was in mid-October. The loss dropped Georgia to 4-3.
It was without Todd Gurley and coming off of a 41-26 loss at Mizzou. Vanderbilt’s upset came in the midst of Georgia’s injury-ravaged 8-5 season.
South Carolina seems to benefit from SEC hype. It seems to get lots of hype, but for what? IMO, its hard to consider a team as a power, until they’ve won something of substance.
Oklahoma State has actually won the Big 12. Kansas State and Baylor have too. Those programs now have a taste of winning something significant. Even Kansas went to and won a BCS game after the 2007 season.
South Carolina can’t claim a conference title, nor has it played in a BCS bowl.
Despite playing in the “softer” SEC East, they’ve reached the conference title game once in the past five seasons.
In 2010, they met Auburn in the SEC title game. The Tigers barely broke a sweat, 56-17.
The start of this season is a nice snapshot of South Carolina’s program.
They’re always hyped, promoted and awarded a prime position in the upper part of the polls, but have zero to show for it.
Agree with K. WVU is a surprise. They played a well rounded game against a far superior talented team, in Alabama. Ostate is gonna be really good by seasons end. Big 12, with OU, OSU, Kstate, Texas and TCU( presumably)and Baylor, should be really, really good. The conference, as a whole, should surprise the national pundits.
OU has 2 games to fine tune everything before a road trip to W. Virginia on the 20th. West Virginia will be higher than a kite when OU comes to town. W. Virg. plays at Maryland the week before OU comes to town. Wonder if that will be a trap game for them. Okie States Tyrek Hill is a bona-fide football player with a track stars speed. If he’s on the field you have to account for him. Looks like every week in the the Big 12 – OU will need to be at the top of their game.
Agree, Big 12 is a darn good conference. Think Bama or FSU want’s to play a round robin in Big 12? We all know that answer. I know we get carried away with the SEC ( I know I do) but I have to say, UCLA is way overrated. 3 defensive TD’s to win the game? They get a lot of love due to Mora but they are not showing me much.
I watched the Wisconsin game and for the life of me I can’t understand why in the last 5 – 7 years they can’t recruit a QB. I realize Russell was there 1 year but what gives. Maybe they can’t develop one or they can’t recruit one but it was embarrassing.
I think people get to carried away with close losses or “moral victories”. The fact is, West Virginia and OSU still LOST. Iowa State was DOMINATED by an FCS school. Texas Tech barely escaped against another FCS school. Kansas is still a disaster. For the Big 12 to truly be an “elite” conference on the level of the SEC, Big 12 schools have to actually WIN games, and not just lose close.
TT won, right? Florida lost to an FCS school last year. Let’s compare:
Big 12 Bottom feeders – Kansas, ISU
Alabama 7 – 1Auburn 7 – 1 LSU5 – 32581999 – 3444272Texas A&M4 – 43072928 – 4523371Ole Miss3 – 51802207 – 5365291Mississippi St.3 – 51792376 – 6316292Arkansas0 – 81353033 – 9248369SEC – EastW-LPFPAW-LPFPAMissouri7 – 128314911 – 1465233South Carolina6 – 225317810 – 2409240Georgia5 – 32922548 – 4458353Vanderbilt4 – 42132418 – 4350296FloridTennessee 2 – 6
Kentucky 0 – 8
I don’t think that the Big 12 needs to be on the SECs level to be underrated. Most agree the SEC is the best conference. But there are also a lot of folks that look at the Big 12 as possibly the worst of the big 5 conferences. I think the big 12 can be undervalued even if it’s not as good as the SEC
I think the Pac12 is the best conference, followed by the Sec. I think the Big 12 isn’t the worst…still better than ACC. It remains to be seen whether we are better than the big 10. We need to have 5 top 25 teams each year and win our bowl games to get that respect since we don’t have conf championship game.
Not ready to say where the XII is exactly, need to see some more games. I do think that WV and oSu played with nothing to lose which they can’t do week after week. Anyone who doesn’t have a financial interest in the sec-sec-sec will say they are over rated this year and Fla. St. is no where close to being the best in the land.
I’ve seen a lot of this talk after the first weekend on the cable networks. Funny how just a few games can turn around conventional wisdom in a hurry.
I honestly think FSU treated oSu the same way we treated LA Tech…knowing we were going to win so we didn’t do anything schematically advanced. Base defense, simple offensive plan, etc. I hear people on the radio say oSu was “great defensively”, and my own brother commented that it was the best oSu defense he’s seen in years. I’m still scratching my head on that one…giving up something like 23 first downs, 475 yards, 37 points and losing the game equates to great defense? Really?
The oSu faithful will tout the FSU game as a moral victory–that is the only oSu football tradition; “moral victories”. In the rest of the world, it’s still called a loss.
OU gave up entirely too many yards and points to Bama in the Sugar Bowl. Fortunately, they created a boatload of turnovers and qb sacks to offset the yards & points. The offense played great too. But the difference between us and oSu or WVU is that we upset the highly ranked and strongly favored opponent. They didn’t. What I saw is two Big 12 teams that lost.
Sadly, I think the Big 12 will have 2 or maybe 3 quality teams, followed by all mediocre teams and 2 stinkers in KU and ISU. I hope I’m wrong about that but I just can’t get excited about 2 conference losses to SEC opponents.