All that college football felt so dang good. But with the Big 12 done for the Labor Day weekend, it is time for some debriefing. After all, the college football season only gives us 12 regular season data points to evaluate teams. With all the euphoria we are all experiencing having college football back, let’s suspend restraint. It is time to make sweeping generalizations with only 60 minutes of football played. So which one of these week one overactions from the Big 12 will stay true for the remainder of the 2023 season?
Week One Overactions From the Big 12
Baylor Is Going to Finish Last in the Standings
“Dave Arranda stinks. How can we lose to a team that has NEVER beaten a Power Five opponent?!?!?”
Admittedly, no one saw this coming. But it is hard to have a worse start in a prove-it year than as a 26.5-point favorite losing at home to an in-state opponent that has had zero success against anyone from the Power Five.
Reality Check: Is this week one overaction actually based on some truth? Quarterback Blake Shapen left the game with a knee injury. However, Texas State was the better team all game and Shapen has never got the offense where Arranda imagined he would. If we take away Baylor’s 2021 Big 12 championship season, Arranda is just 8-15. Also, for a career defensive coordinator, surrendering 42 to the Bobcats is very concerning.
TCU Was a Fluke
“How can the team that played for a national championship last season lose at home to a team that was the worst in the Power Five last year?
TCU certainly caught a lot of break last season. It also has now given up a total of 110 points in the Horned Frogs’ last two games. The starting quarterback last year against Colorado, Chandler Morris, looked very inaccurate for much of the game.
Reality Check: Of all the week one overactions, this one is really more about Colorado than TCU. Travis Hunter’s performance in his 7,000 snaps on both sides of the ball (actually number was 144) was one of the most impressive individual game performances in the last decade. Head coach Deion Sanders’ squad looked the most poised and played the most disciplined in this game. But TCU looked soft at times defensively. TCU offensive coordinator Kendal Briles seemed to ignore the success TCU had rushing the ball all game. With all the NFL talent TCU lost, it could be a larger step back than most imagined 2023 would be.
Texas Tech Doesn’t Have the Horses
“That horse the mascot might ride is dark, but Texas Tech is NOT a darkhorse contender for the Big 12 title.”
How can a team play so poorly in the last 45 minutes of a game after playing almost perfectly in the first 15? A true college kicker experience, with three missed kicks, by Texas Tech aided a 35-33 defeat at the physical hands of Wyoming. It’s clear the hype this team received this off-season is too much for them.
Reality Check: Head Coach Joey McGuire looked shell-shocked after this late-night defeat. It really was a great snapshot into a viewpoint surely the entire team shared. The look-ahead factor and altitude certainly played a factor in this one. However, this game boiled down to the Wyoming coaching staff doing a better job than the Texas Tech one. Plenty of teams have stumbled out of the gates and still go on to great success (see Utah in the last two seasons). But the Red Raiders don’t have any more mulligans.
Oklahoma Is Back
“The score was 73-0! We don’t care if it was against Arkansas State”
And just like that, Brent Venables is off the hot seat. His leaky defense of 2022 is gone, pitching a shutout in week one. It is pretty evident that if the team can score 73 points in regulation, they have zero concerns about playmakers. All that roster talent is finally gelling. It’s time to pencil the Sooners in to play for the Big 12 championship.
Reality Check: This is exactly how the Sooners started last year. They were 3-0 against lesser competition and showed no signs of drop-off with Lincoln Riley’s departure to the west coast. So this week one overaction really shouldn’t be rolling off any Sooner fan’s lips.
No Adjustment Needed for Newbies
“They were always playing in a Power Five Conference, but no one wanted to accept how good the football was in the American.”
BYU was an independent who was scheduling a pseudo-Pac 12 schedule most years. Cincinnati just played in the college football playoff two years ago. Dana Holgersen and Gus Malzahn have coached at this level so they knew what would be required to be successful.
Reality Check: BYU was playing a team that was playing FCS football last year and couldn’t do more than a 14-0 sleepy victory. UCF kicked the teeth out of a lowly MAC team. Cincinnati played an FCS team. Houston did have a great victory over UTSA, while also being the best-dressed team in all the land in week one. And while someone at Last Word does project a very good season for the Knights, three of the four games in week one didn’t tell us much. The biggest challenge for all four of these teams is the depth and quality of the opponent for a full schedule. So until we get to the mid-way point of the season, no one truly knows if they have the talent to sustain a full-season grind through the Big 12.
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