Heading into the slate of games for the Big 12 Conference, two teams figured to be at the top. Of course that was the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns. Most in the media expected those teams to play in the Big 12 Championship with the winner likely going into the College Football Playoffs.
After the first week of conference play, the Oklahoma Sooners drop their game to the Kansas State Wildcats. It dropped them into the bottom 10 of the Top 25 in both the Amway Coaches and AP Poll. That gave the Sooners their second-straight defeat to Kansas State.
The Longhorns on the other hand needed a historic comeback in Lubbock to win their second game of the year. They would go on and win in overtime. The Longhorns defense looked awful with their tackling. A team that struggled with FCS’ Houston Baptist put 56 on the Texas Longhorns. This game shouldn’t have been that close.
Dan Wolken of USA TODAY Sports questions if the Big 12 Conference is in trouble. As he stated in his observations of week four, the Big 12 hasn’t looked ready to play.
So far, the Big 12 isn’t merely living up to its reputation as the league most susceptible to chaos and parity; it’s signaling that the bad teams are really bad and the good teams aren’t particularly good. That’s not a great recipe for a CFP bid.
The bottom line is, the issues with the conference’s two premiere programs haven’t changed. Oklahoma’s defense is still a problem. Leading 35-14 late in the third quarter, the game turned on a 78-yard completion by Kansas State, which then out-scored the Sooners 17-0 in the fourth.
Meanwhile, Texas looked bad on defense, special teams and the offensive line and faced almost certain defeat in Lubbock trailing 56-41 with 3:13 remaining. The fact the Longhorns somehow won the game 63-56 is a testament to some clutch playmaking late and a complete collapse by the Red Raiders.
But while Texas can momentarily breathe a sigh of relief, this was not an encouraging performance for Tom Herman, who retooled his entire coaching staff after a disappointing 8-5 record in 2019.
While Dan makes some good points on how the “elites” of the conference looked on Saturday, it is only week four of the college football season. The Southeastern Conference have only played one game. The Big Ten and Pac-12 have yet to take the field. Not to mention these teams didn’t have much of a spring. In fact the Longhorns didn’t get any work in the spring with a brand new staff in place.
It might be time to take a deep breath and see how it plays out in the coming weeks. The Longhorns and Sooners will meet up on Oct. 10 in Dallas, Texas.