BIG 12 FOOTBALL Road is not what newbies expected

TCU, West Virginia didn’t exactly tear up league in first attempt.

Imagine if West Virginia’s offense could be combined with TCU’s defense. The Big 12 might have had a dynamic new force. Or at least another Texas A&M, which went 10-2 and won a Heisman Trophy.

But back in the real world, the Big 12 roll-out seasons for the Mountaineers and Horned Frogs were an eternal struggle. They each served up half of a good team and took a lot more lumps in the land of big-boy football than they were accustomed.

Both finished 7-5, just 4-5 in the Big 12, and scratched their way to lower-tier bowl games coming up Saturday.

The results were particularly galling for West Virginia, bringing with it an experienced 10-3 team that rang up 70 points in the Orange Bowl.

“It was a bitter pill to swallow,” coach Dana Holgorsen said, “and a bit of an eye-opener for our fans. Were West Virginia fans surprised by our record? That’s an understatement. We’ve won a lot, the fans are used to that and, when it doesn’t happen, it gets kinda bitter.

“The Big 12’s as deep as it’s ever been, and there’s not a lot of separation between a large pack of teams. Once the conference season starts, every week is a significant challenge. We were a few plays from

The 2012 All-Central Texas football team was drawn primarily from high school players within the fivecounty Austin metropolitan area, which consists of Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties.

The AmericanStatesman’s high school sports staff — reporters Danny Davis and Rick Cantu and editorJames Wangemann — reviewed nominations from area coaches and studied allstate and all-district teams to determine the final selections.