League continues to fight perception that its teams play little or no defense
Are all those points being scored in Big 12 games a sign of weakness?
No Big 12 teams were ranked higher than sixth in the first College Football Playoff poll released this week. So are the monster numbers produced in the league the major reason the conference is judged behind the others?
The national narrative about the Big 12 has been interesting the last few days. After Baylor earned a No. 6 ranking in the first CFP poll and TCU checked in at eighth, it led some in the fly-over states to wonder if there again could be a national conspiracy against the only Power Five league left out of the CFP last season.
The biggest reason is because there is a perception that defense is not being played in the Big 12.
ESPN/ABC analyst Kirk Herbstreit ranted last week about the “Arena Ball” football played by Big 12 teams.
ESPN analyst Danny Kanell talked on his radio show this week about looking for some plays that would highlight Oklahoma State’s opportunistic defense. Instead, he noted that he never had seen a league where more receivers ran unguarded on post patterns.
The Big 12 again leads the nation in scoring (36.9 points a game per team) and total offense (482.10 yards per game).
But at least in the view of CFP chairman Jeff Long, scoring is an explanation for weakness. It seems he will take the grind-it-out, hit-’em-the-mouth football played by teams like Alabama and Notre Dame, who both rank ahead of the unbeaten Bears and Horned Frogs despite having one loss apiece, any day.
Eye test a little fuzzy
Long termed the balance of teams as the most influential element in his so-called eye test.
“We have teams that are just one-sided offensive teams or one-sided, really strong defensive teams,” Long said. “That combination of offense and defense (is what the CFP is looking for). How they’ve played offensively and defensively. Sometimes, that’s the hardest thing to judge.”
That is why it will be interesting to see the reverberations after Saturday’s game between TCU and Oklahoma State.
Both teams and their tendencies should produce another of those shootouts for which the Big 12 has become noted over the years.
The Horned Frogs have produced three victories this season in which they have yielded at least 37 points, and the Cowboys are coming off a 70-53 triumph over Texas Tech at Lubbock. That leads to a pretty safe deduction that we will have some pinball-like offensive numbers at Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater on Saturday.
All of which likely be counterproductive to both teams’ CFP hopes next week.
Given the tenor of the times, it probably would be beneficial for the winner to prevail 21-17 rather than 52-49.
The CFP selection committee ranked all of the Southeastern Conference teams in its first poll higher than in the Associated Press media poll or the poll.
Sure, it’s understandable that one or two SEC teams might be better than the other two polls ranked them. But all six?
SEC bias obvious
And of course, this is coming from the same group that ranked three SEC teams in their top four and four in their top six in their first poll last season.
Interestingly, those four SEC teams went on to bowl games, where they lost. Mississippi State, Mississippi, Alabama and Auburn allowed an average of 41.8 points and 514.5 yards in their bowl defeats.
So the SEC apologists can keep telling us how tough the conference is, but with those kind of numbers, I think all of them should apply for immediate membership in the Big 12.
You know, that conference where they don’t play any defense.