No doubt Lincoln Riley has been winning every round up till now. Dana Holgorsen went 0-7 against Oklahoma as a head coach and the scores after Riley joined the Sooner staff went: 2015: OU 44, WVU 24 2016: OU 56, WVU 28 2017: OU 59, WVU 31 2018: OU 59, WVU 56 That last one … [Read more…]
Nickel became the standard “base defense” for the Big 12 sometime around the turn of the decade. Honestly I haven’t done the research to pinpoint the exact year but Texas went base nickel in 2008, Oklahoma State was starting Shaun Lewis as their “star” LB in 2010, and of course Oklahoma rolled in nickel as … [Read more…]
About a year ago I decided to write a book about the Big 12’s rich history of excellent offensive play. The book was going to be titled, “The 10 greatest QBs in Big 12 history.” That seemed reasonable enough a project given that the Big 12 has only existed since 1996 and I’ve watched it … [Read more…]
The other day I posted this thought on Twitter: So the tiers would look like this: Tier 1: Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa State Tier 2: Oklahoma State, TCU, Baylor, Texas Tech Tier 3: West Virginia, Kansas State 50 feet of crap… Kansas I got a good follow up question from Jay Jordan over at Cyclone Fanatic: … [Read more…]
While breaking down Oklahoma’s prospective depth chart on defense the other day, the size and weight balance of their roster really stood out. Mike Stoops really wasn’t building a defensive roster that was friendly to a major change in approach. After his initial run at the Big 12 in 2012 where the Sooners ran a … [Read more…]
All of the fall camps are wrapping up so there’s some details out now on how different teams are coming together. Here’s a look around at some of the interesting notes that have been cropping up. Oklahoma State One fun detail to come out recently was Mike Gundy noting that his team would have probably … [Read more…]
Ian Boyd: Coach, last year with the new defensive coordinator, you brought a lot of pressure, finished 10th nationally in sacks, but gave up 32 and a half points per game. Will the approach on defense change this year in year two to something more conservative or will you guys run it back and look … [Read more…]
I’m actually on the wrong side of the Mississippi these days to utilize this expression. It’s an old expression meant to describe unique features of the frontier in contrast to the more densely packed populations and civilization on the east side of the country. Nowadays the east side of the Mississippi has 58% of the … [Read more…]
There’s no beating the South for college football. The Midwest takes the game very, very seriously and the Big 10 has started to catch up again with the SEC since hiring Urban Meyer and slowly integrating the spread offense across the rust belt and plains. Still, there’s a number of factors working against the B1G … [Read more…]
Who’s making the playoffs in 2019? I’ve been pretty bad at prognosticating this over the years. Usually I’m pretty dialed in on a handful of potential teams. Last year I nixed Ohio State amidst concerns over program distractions but I elevated Michigan and committed the error for the second consecutive year of overlooking problems at … [Read more…]