Week 11 was a great one for Big 12 football. The Baylor-TCU game took place at noon, which was a big win given the ratings bonanza taking place at 3:30 (not K-State/TX), and then the Big 12 had far and away the best primetime game in the Iowa State-Oklahoma battle. Perhaps this was inevitable but … [Read more…]
Over at Crimson and Cream machine, SB Nation’s Oklahoma blog, Allen Kenney did a nice piece on Iowa State tight end Charlie Kolar. Kenney does a great job of detailing all the ways that Iowa State uses Kolar, who’s ironically a Norman, OK native that got away, before circling back to the specific matchup problems … [Read more…]
I was preparing for my Kansas State preview over at Inside Texas (those drop on Thursdays and I believe this one will be free) today and went down a statistical rabbit hole that proved interesting. I was looking up how much of Kansas State’s pressure comes from their DL and the DL’s share of the … [Read more…]
Week 10 was destined to be one of little consequence for this season in the Big 12 unless disaster befell some team or another. I guess there were some disastrous events for the TCU Horned Frogs, but they weren’t a team of much consequence for this season save for as a potential spoiler, a role … [Read more…]
How do you control the line of scrimmage with only three or four players? That’s a central question in today’s Big 12, although it’s been a useful skill for some time now. Back in 2008 when Will Muschamp took over the Texas defense, he was surprised by a number of things he found waiting for … [Read more…]
Huge week of action in the Big 12. I got in a late shot before the weekend on Friday where I noted suspicions that TCU’s defense didn’t look up to their normal standard (may need revision but I’m still not sure) and also that Baylor might actually be the class of the league. What followed … [Read more…]
I have a few sneaking suspicions about the league this year that I don’t think are ironclad yet. It’s often easy for me to forget that teams change throughout the year. Iowa State always seems to improve, especially after adding young Matt Campbell recruits on offense into the mix. Texas is on an absolute roller … [Read more…]
I may have to take back some of my comments about Les Miles’ errors in pulling the scholarship from Jax “the destroyer” Dineen. There’s two arguments in favor of Miles’ decision that have made it an apparently justifiable move. The first is that by accepting the transfer of his own son, Ben Miles, as a … [Read more…]
It’s very difficult, as you tend to see play out in the Big 12 on a weekly basis. Here’s some notes that the venerable Mike Gundy gave me at B12 media days on the practice: You know, there’s really two ways in our league. You either gotta defend the quarterback, width and length, or you … [Read more…]
That’s the name of chapter three in the book, which tells the tale of how Bob Stoops took over Oklahoma, hired “the Pirate” Mike Leach to bring the Air Raid, and transformed the Big 12 and game of football forever. I posted an excerpt you can read for free over at Texas Tech blog, Staking … [Read more…]