A trio of Oklahoma Sooners led the way in our Week 3 top performers.
In Week 3, there were a total of 13 games on the Big 12 schedule. Only one of those matchups, TCU at Houston, was a conference matchup.
The Kansas State Wildcats, BYU Cougars, and West Virginia Mountaineers were the only teams facing off against Power Five teams. BYU and WVU took care of business while KSU lost to Missouri on a game-winning 61-yard field goal as time expired.
The rest of the Big 12 went 8-3 and the worst loss of the bunch was the 33-7 loss to South Alabama by Oklahoma State. Overall, the Big 12 looked ready to begin conference play for 12 of the remaining 14 conference teams for Week 4.
Dillon Gabriel and the Oklahoma Sooners led the way in our weekly top performers.
If Deion Sanders and Colorado were in the #Big12 this year, they would be ranked at the top of the conference after three games.
If the Four Corners schools — Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Arizona State — were already part of the Big 12 Conference, where would they be placed in a set of football rankings after Week 3 of the college football season? Deion Sanders has his CU Buffaloes 3-0 heading into Week 4. Utah is also 3-0. Those two schools have plenty of reason to think they can rule the Big 12 once Texas and Oklahoma leave.
It is precisely with that point in mind that we are ranking the Big 12 with the four incoming Pac-12 schools — and without Texas and Oklahoma — during this 2023 college football campaign.
Let’s go to the big board for the latest rankings, reminding you that rankings are based on actual results against opponents with their own results. These rankings do not reflect end-of-season projections or assessments of which team Las Vegas would favor on a neutral field:
The Four Corners schools (Arizona, ASU, Colorado, Utah) are included in these Big 12 rankings. Texas and Oklahoma are excluded.
The death and splintering of the Pac-12 means that all sorts of interesting school comparisons can be made this year.
We are going to spend this 2023 season ranking next year’s Big 12 Conference. In other words, we will keep track of the Big 12 teams which are remaining in the conference next year — everyone other than Texas and Oklahoma — plus the incoming Pac-12 teams from the Four Corners schools: Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado.
Remember, as always, that weekly rankings are not a reflection of season-ending projections or which teams are expected to contend for the College Football Playoff. Rankings are similarly not reflections of who would be favored head-to-head on a neutral field.
Rankings are based solely on which teams have the best (or worst) resumes. Teams with FCS wins are ranked lower. Teams with quality wins are ranked higher. This is how every Trojans Wire rankings piece, from every staff writer, is organized.
Here are the 2024 Big 12 rankings — in other words, with the four Pac-12 schools included — after Week 2:
Texas Longhorns beat Alabama Crimson Tide and Big 12 goes 1-2 vs. Pac-12. Who’s on the move in this week’s Big 12 Power Rankings?
Week 2 had several fantastic matchups. Three Big 12 teams played Pac-12 opponents. The Texas Longhorns provided an SEC preview in its win over Alabama.
Big 12 teams matched up with the Pac-12, Big Ten, ACC and SEC on Saturday, providing an intriguing group of games for fans to dive into. The conference went 10-4.
Here are this week’s Big 12 power rankings after Week 2.
How will the departure of the Four Corners schools — ASU, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado — change the Big 12?
Our friends at Buffaloes Wire are heading to the Big 12 next year. When they get there, whom will they want to play the most in their new (old) conference?
“The Big 12 that Colorado will be rejoining in 2024 is a vastly different conference than the one Buffs fans remember from 13 years ago. Missouri and Texas A&M are now in the SEC, and Texas and Oklahoma are set to follow after this year.”
Buffs Wire added that the old Big 12 rivalry with Kansas State “picked up some steam in the late 1990s and early 2000s with several close games coming between the two teams. Although Colorado hasn’t faced its old conference rival since 2010, I’m confident that this matchup will pick up right where it left off.
#Big12 fans should be happy. Their conference will live on. The #Pac12 will die. Yet, the Pac going 13-0 caused a lot of people to go crazy.
It was very weird to see Big 12 football fans cope with a really bad weekend for their conference. The Big 12 had a fantastic offseason thanks to commissioner Brett Yormark, who ran rings around Pac-12 boss George Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 CEO Group. Yormark secured the Big 12’s long-term future with savvy and well-timed deals. The Pac-12 CEO Group, meanwhile, rejected a 2022 ESPN deal which would have kept the conference intact and unified. Kliavkoff, aware of how Larry Scott failed to exercise good leadership in the past, failed to tell the Pac-12 CEOs to get in line and accept the conference-saving deal. He allowed himself to get steamrolled, and in the process, he didn’t lead the conference with toughness or courage in its hour of peril. He allowed the CEOs to take down the conference, which will soon die.
Big 12 fans should be happy that their conference will live while the Pac-12 will not. It’s what they wanted. Big 12 fans should be able to easily shrug off what happened on the field this past weekend. So what if the Pac-12 didn’t lose a game, and the Big 12 suffered several bad losses? The Pac-12 won’t exist next year. Four Pac-12 schools will join the Big 12.
If the Big 12 is bad in football this year while the Pac-12 is great, it shouldn’t matter to Big 12 folks. They have a future, and they will add Pac-12 member institutions. The Pac-12 is dying.
Yet, the Pac-12’s success in Week 1 really seemed to get under the skin of Big 12 fans, who watched their conference stumble on several occasions. Insecurity apparently didn’t end with the offseason realignment skirmishes which dominated the conversation in college sports.
See for yourself how unsettled and restless Big 12 fans were. More specifically, notice how often a Big 12 fan would point out the Pac-12’s long-term failures when the discussion point was only the 2023 season, not the past seven to 10 years:
The #Pac12 didn’t lose on Saturday, while 3 #Big12 teams favored by 14 or more all lost. You can’t make this stuff up.
Baylor was favored by nearly four touchdowns against Texas State at home. TCU was favored by 20 points against Colorado at home. Texas Tech was favored by two touchdowns over Wyoming on the road. Each of those three Big 12 teams lost outright on Saturday, part of an absolutely miserable day on the field for the Big 12.
Texas struggled for much of the first half against Rice before pulling away in the second half. West Virginia’s offense once again looked bad in a loss to Penn State.
New Big 12 members BYU and Houston looked terrible on offense in sluggish, uncomfortable wins against opponents they should have beaten by larger margins. Neither BYU nor Houston were able to score as many as 18 points (let alone 30 or 35 or 40).
The Big 12 was bad in Week 1 of the college football season. There wasn’t a single notable win from the conference. Oklahoma did, in fairness, look great, but that was against a cupcake opponent, Arkansas State. The Big 12 didn’t score a win over a high-quality team. Not one.
Meanwhile, the Pac-12 did not lose a game this week and has not yet lost a game this season. USC scored 66 points in a 52-point win. Oregon scored 81. Washington absolutely thumped Boise State. Stanford scored an impressive win at Hawaii. Cal scored 58 in a blowout of North Texas. Utah thrashed Florida on Thursday in a high-profile game. Last but certainly not least, Deion Sanders and Colorado stunned TCU, the team which made the national championship game last year.
The Pac-12 was supposed to be good at the top of the conference, with USC, Oregon, Washington, and Utah forming a fabulous four. However, with Colorado being much better than expected and the Bay Area schools looking far better than anyone anticipated, this conference looks like an absolute sausage grinder in which nearly every game will be tough. It is the best the Pac-12 has looked from top to bottom in a very long time.
Yet, the conference is basically dead, all while the Big 12 is safe and sound because of the Grand Canyon-sized gulf in leadership and savvy from executives and administrators. It’s all very bizarre, and it has to be infuriating for Pac-12 fans who know that this high level of football won’t continue into 2024 … because there won’t be a Pac-12 Conference by then.
Pac-12 fans couldn’t really laugh at the Big 12 because their conference is about to die. It’s one of the strangest things we’ve seen in college sports, but it played out on social media on Saturday:
West Virginia goes on the road in week one to take on the Penn State Nittany Lions in a pivotal nonconference matchup. Here are this week’s Big 12 picks.
There aren’t a lot of big-time matchups in the Big 12 in week one, but there are a few intriguing contests. West Virginia goes on the road to take on Penn State. Texas Tech is the only other Big 12 team playing away from home this week, but take on Wyoming in what could be an interesting contest.
Houston hosts UTSA, a team that’s started to gain national recognition among Group of Five teams.
UCF got the Big 12 started off right with a huge win over Kent State on Thursday night. John Rhys Plumlee had 371 combined passing and rushing yards and four total touchdowns in their 56-6 win over Kent State.
Can the conference keep things going starting Friday night with Kansas hosting Missouri State?
There will be some big-time performances this week. Here are our Big 12 predictions for week one.
As week one approaches, 2023 offers “One Last Time” for the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns to play their Big 12 foes.
The Oklahoma Sooners and the Texas Longhorns are set to embark on their final journey through the Big 12. The flagship institutions will make their move to the SEC officially on July 1, 2024, taking on a new adventure.
Their journey coming over the next few months reminds me of a number from the world-wide sensation, “Hamilton.”
At the end of Washington’s tenure in the musical’s second act, the first president of the United States, played originally by Christopher Jackson, performs a song titled, “One Last Time.” The song acts as a goodbye letter, using Washington’s own words to help move the country along in its early stages.
And in a way, that’s where the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns are. Though they’ve had differing levels of success over the course of the Big 12’s existence, the two programs have acted as figureheads on the national stage for the last 25-plus years.
Oklahoma in particular, with its 14 Big 12 titles, and until TCU in 2022, its only playoff appearances. The branding that comes with the Longhorns and the Sooners helped keep the Big 12 afloat during the realignment a decade ago that saw Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Texas A&M disperse for greener pastures. Those schools have found limited success while the Big 12 survived and built a strong brand.
And as the last couple of years have shown, since Oklahoma and Texas were invited to the SEC, the Big 12 has enough cache to be a player on the national level.
In 2021, Oklahoma State was literally inches away from securing a College Football Playoff berth. Had they beaten Baylor, they would have had a great shot at taking the fourth spot in the playoff.
In 2022, Kansas State and TCU played for the Big 12 title. The Wildcats upset the Horned Frogs but it didn’t diminish TCU’s playoff odds.
The Big 12 and its departing Red River members are ready to move on. That’s what the early exit agreement set out to do. There are hard feelings toward Oklahoma and Texas. Brett Yormark’s comments last week to a Texas Tech gathering revealed how he feels about the split. We know the Big 12 schools of the last decade have hard feelings about it.
Well, the 2023 season provides one last time for everyone to take their shot at the conference powers.
The 2023 season also provides one last time for the Sooners and Longhorns to say goodbye to their Big 12 brethren before heading off to the SEC.
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After much speculation, Ted Roof sets the record straight that he calls the plays for the defense.
We are four days away from the kickoff of the [autotag] 2023 football college football season[/autotag]. The time has come to see what progress the team has made since a year ago. Soon we’ll find out if they are headed in the right direction.
This year is one of the most important in recent memories. It’s year two under [autotag]Brent Venables[/autotag] and the final season in the [autotag]Big 12 Conference[/autotag].
Venables came in known for elite defenses, but that was far from the case a year ago. The Sooners ranked 122nd nationally in total defense.
Defensive Coordinator Ted Roof told reporters during Monday’s press conference that they’ve made progress this offseason, but they aren’t where they want to be. He hopes to see that progress this weekend.
“I want to see us play physical,” Roof said. “I want to see the execution level. I want to see us play with great strain and put on a good show.”
One question that has been around since a season ago is how big of a role Venables plays with the defense. We know he has a hand in it, but how big of a hand does he have in it? Some even believe it’s actually Venables who calls the plays.
“I do, and then if he wants to override something and call something, then he does,” Roof said. “That’s how we roll.”
That is pretty common for teams. If the head coach disagrees with a call, he’s able to change it if he wants to. Last year, Venables spent so much time with the defense during the game that there were moments of poor clock management.
That’s one of the areas the Sooners have to improve if they want to be better this season.
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