Bill Connelly’s 128-team countdown hits the Big 12, with a new team each weekday.
OU is mysterious and dangerous
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If you forget everything you remember about Oklahoma’s 2013 and 2014 seasons, the stats tell a pretty boring, straight-forward tale. In 2013, Bob Stoops’ Sooners broke a long, steady streak of very good (but rarely elite) play, falling out of the F/+ top 10 for the first time since 2005. They ranked second in 2008 and either sixth or ninth six other times. That’s a remarkable string of performance, and it was destined to end.
Read Article >Oklahoma State is a lurking Big 12 dark horse
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Your track record determines your benefit of the doubt. If Alabama lost 18 starters one year, we’d still assume a top-10 performance. If Oregon lost all 11 starters on offense, we’d still assume prolific point totals. And if Kansas returned its entire two-deep, we’d still assume losses.
Read Article >Texas Tech and Kingsbury should rebound
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I thought I was tapping the brakes when talking about Texas Tech last year, but I evidently wasn’t doing it enough.
Read Article >WVU’s got a nasty D and a questionable O
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It’s been an odd few years for fans of West Virginia, and I’m not even talking about the “became conference foes with teams in Kansas and West Texas” part. The Mountaineers got a taste of truly elite football -- they finished first in the 2007 F/+ rankings but lost to at home to rival Pitt and missed out on the BCS Championship game, then lost head coach Rich Rodriguez to Michigan -- and quickly grew intolerant of merely solid play.
Read Article >Can Texas overcome offensive woes?
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From #branding and money perspectives, life as a Longhorn has rarely been better than it is right now. The Longhorn Network is doing better than you think, and revenues are second to, temporarily, one. The facilities look nice, and both major sports have made no-brainer hires in the past 20 months.
Read Article >Baylor over TCU in Big 12 rankings
At the end of each conference run-through (here’s the whole Big 12), I look at how I perceive the conference’s balance of power heading into 2015. This is in no way based on schedules. These are not predictions. They’re just how I would rank the teams after writing thousands of words about each.
The Big 12 has had a rather silly offseason, going through an existential crisis because of a single Playoff snub. But while it debates the merits of a conference title game and a move from 10 to 12 teams, its actual teams should be interesting this fall.
Read Article >The TCU bandwagon is a little too crowded
Baylor is the Big 12’s safest bet
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If you add up each year’s F/+ ratings for Oklahoma, Texas, and Baylor going back to 2005, you get an average rating of plus-28.6 percent per team per year. That’s pretty good -- on average, it would get you ranked about 20th. And it’s even more impressive considering how much Baylor stunk before Art Briles got to town. There have been combined highs (a plus-45.7 percent average in 2008) and lows (plus-15.5 percent in 2010), but in seven of 10 years, the average rating has been within about nine percentage points of 28.6.
Read Article >Does Snyder have one more big year left at KSU?
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Bill Snyder is not going to coach forever.
Read Article >Jayhawks start over (again)
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For the last 20 years, David Beaty has based in three areas: the greater Dallas area, the greater Houston area, and Lawrence, Kansas.
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