Oklahoma has fallen for the first time in a year, which means we have a new No. 1. Meanwhile Iowa State enters the top five and eyes West Virginia.
The King is dead, long live the King! After spending the first six weeks, including preseason, on top of our Big 12 power rankings, Oklahoma has been toppled in Big 12 play for the first time in nearly exactly one year, after Iowa State got them on Oct. 7 in 2017. This year, that loss came in the Red River Shootout, and was honestly one of the most enjoyable games of the whole season to this point.
I’ll talk about it in more depth a little later, but from Texas consistently overpowering Oklahoma’s defense to the turn in the fourth quarter that saw Kyler Murray go Super Saiyan and lead a massive comeback to the freshman, Dicker the kicker, with ice in his veins, nailing the game winner and spawning 3000 “Texas is back!” takes, it was just an awesome football game.
It wasn’t the only game in the Big 12 though, as Kansas-West Virginia, Iowa State-Oklahoma State, and Kansas State-Baylor all put up interesting games with Texas Tech and TCU both on a bye week. While only having eight teams play does make this ranking a little bit harder to do, it was a much more active week overall. After just three changes in last week’s rankings, in the four to six slots, there’s way more movement after Week 6, including a new number one, a fall from grace for both Oklahoma teams, and the rise of Iowa State back into the upper half of the conference.
We still don’t know everything there is to know about every team in this conference, but roughly halfway through the season, we’re getting much closer to knowing, and a clearer picture of who can actually contend for a Big 12 title is being painted.
Before we start rankings, let’s do the weekly disclaimer to spare my Twitter mentions. These rankings are reactive, not predictive, so they’re based entirely on what has happened on the field. Is Oklahoma State the seventh best team in the conference? Probably not. Do I have them there because of what they’ve done? Yup.