The State of the Big 12: When will the North rise again?

It seems the Big 12 South's season-long reign as "America's Division" survived the postseason flops after all -- even after Texas Tech and Oklahoma State were dispatched in eye-openeing second routs, Oklahoma dropped its fifth straight BCS game and Texas needed a last-minute comeback to stave off an upset at the hands of Ohio State (Todd Boeckman-led Ohio State!), the pollsters still love the South. Every poll -- literally every poll thus far published to any notable audience -- has Texas and Oklahoma in its top five, and the vast majority raise Oklahoma State in the top-10 or 12, possibly the highest expectations in Cowboy history, despite their being physically whipped by Oregon in the Holiday Bowl. Texas Tech, even in the wake of serious personnel turnover and a lackluster finish to the best season in school history, has won nine games three of the last four years, will still put up ridiculous offensive numbers and remains hovering at the fringes of most top-25 ballots going in.

This respect makes sense in light of one of the most celebrated records of 208: In the regular season, including the Big 12 Championship game, the top four teams in the South were 43-0 against the rest of college football. Some of that can be chalked up to exactly which parts of college football they were encountering outside the conference -- between Oklahoma State, Texas and Texas Tech, the only non-conference games against teams from another "Big Six" league was OSU's blowout over hapless Washington State and the Longhorns' easy win over Arkansas.

Just as importantly, though, is the ongoing futility of the North, which hit a stunning backslide last year after seemingly pulling itself onto equal footing with the South in 2007:


Those results speak for themselves. Since Kansas State's out-of-nowhere beatdown of Oklahoma in the 2003 championship game, the entire North division has managed to beat the Sooners once and Texas twice in 35 tries -- and all three wins were colossal upsets, at the hands of Kansas State (which won a turnover-marred game against Texas in '06 and shocked the Horns in Austin in '07) and Colorado (which secured Dan Hawkins' only notable win in Boulder by taking out Oklahoma in '07). The North has not come close to winning a conference championship game since KSU's triumph, and in fact hasn't been favored to win one since Nebraska beat Texas in 1999. Even Missouri, ranked No. 1 in both major polls in 2007, was a slight underdog to Oklahoma, and were trounced by three touchdowns.

This is a stark reversal from the early days of the conference, when Nebraska and Kansas State wielded the most power in the immediate aftermath of the conference's formation in 1996. When Texas and Texas A&M won titles in 1996 and 1998, respectively, it was in huge championship game upsets over the Huskers and Wildcats, both of which would have played for a national championship with a win. It's hard not to associate the shift in power with the arrival of Mack Brown (1998), Bob Stoops (1999) and Mike Leach (2000) on the other side, just as Nebraska entered a period of malaise under Frank Solich, Kansas State began to revert to its historical mean at the end of the (first) Bill Snyder era and the division banner was carried four times in five years by Gary Barnett's mostly underwhelming charges at Colorado, which were responsible for being outscored by 108 points in back-to-back championship game losses in 2004-05. Before Missouri the last two years, it had been three years since the North champion had finished in the AP's final top-25.

If the question is how to turn that ship around, the only answer may be "invade Texas." Brown and Stoops' total dominance recruiting the Lone Star State has cut off the pipeline to the distant hamlets of Lincoln, Boulder and Columbia, to the extent that the only worthwhile Texans who make it that far are undersized guys like Chase Daniel and Todd Reesing, who OU and UT passed over.


The gap is so wide that the North championship may again hinge on which team contenders are able to avoid on the inter-division schedule. When Kansas started 11-0 and earned its first BCS bid in 2007, the Jayhawks missed Texas, Oklahoma and Texas Tech and feasted on the bottom half of the South instead, beating Baylor, Texas A&M and then-mediocre Oklahoma State; KU didn't win a game that year against a team that finished above .500 in Big 12 games, and when the Jayhawks got a taste of Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech last year, they went 0-3 and were quickly excised from championship discussion despite another 4-1 mark against the rest of the North. The last two years, Missouri is 12-6 in conference games en route to back-to-back North titles, and five of the six losses are at the hands of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas. The Tigers made the championship game despite losing to Kansas last year in part because they were fortunate enough to draw Baylor instead of Oklahoma or Texas Tech in the inter-division exchange -- and only barely beat the Bears.

With Mizzou transition into rebuilding mode and Nebraska still making its way slowly back up the hill, the South looks like its going to have free reign again, leaving Oklahoma State's game with Georgia in the opener as the only real litmus test for assessing any of the South contenders outside of the self-devouring circle of division showdowns -- at least until the bowl games come around to pass judgment again