With two in conference upsets, a near loss on pay-per-view to the troops, and the possibility of Texas Tech being good, it was a wild week in Big 12 football.
Time flies when you’re having fun! We’re now officially a third of the way through the season, as week five approaches this upcoming weekend. With the fifth week on the horizon comes a change in the Big 12, as all 10 members have now finished their non-conference slate (except for Iowa State, who will play Incarnate Word in December), and will be shifting focus inwards for the nine-game conference slate.
A fresh conference season means that every team has a clean slate, and is looking to make the second Big 12 championship game after it was reintroduced last season. That means that technically, yes, Kansas is a conference championship contender, even though they no longer control their destiny after a loss to Baylor last week.
It also means that each week is absolutely crucial for every team in the conference. Not every team can compete for a playoff appearance, but every team can turn around fortunes in conference play. It’s essentially a fresh season, and no matter what happened in the non-conference slate, you can still put together a successful season.
Do you hear that Texas? That means you can forget about your loss to Maryland! After four conference games last week, and Oklahoma-Iowa State in week three, every Big 12 has one conference game under their belt now. That’s great news for us, as direct competition usually helps to give a much better idea of where these teams are at, so we can power rank them more accurately (hopefully).
While things can get convoluted because college football is weird, and weird losses can happen, the start of conference should generally make these weekly rankings round into shape a bit, and each week will show us more and more of the conference picture. Before we jump in, I’ll throw in my usual disclaimer. These rankings are reactive, not predictive. That means extreme jumps can happen, and that’s why Texas is ranked where they are, despite me completely lacking confidence in the Longhorns.