Power ranking the Big 12 after Week 1*

After a delayed start that included three postponements due to COVID-19 (Baylor, TCU, Ok State), the Big 12 had it’s much anticipated opening weekend and uh... well... it could have gone worse!

No really. Texas Tech was a breath away from losing to a very bad FCS team; TCU and Baylor won by not playing, and there were no major injuries to any of the league’s stars. So, yeah.

Still, a 4-3 start where you don’t play a single power 5 team is less than ideal.

We’ll jump right to it:

1. Oklahoma Sooners (1-0): The Sooners have won the last five conference titles and dominated Bobby Petrino’s (lol) Missouri State squad in a game people paid 50 bucks to watch on PPV. That’s a flex.
2. Oklahoma State Cowboys (0-0): As previously mentioned, the Cowboys opener versus Tulsa was moved to next week due to COVID-19, but absolutely nothing we saw in Week 1 leads me to believe that the Cowboys aren’t the second best team in the conference.
3. Texas Longhorns (1-0): This is the make or break year for the Longhorns and Tom Herman, so of course the Football gods generously supply an asterisk in the form of the pandemic. The Longhorns took care UTEP, but need to be more consistent versus middle-of-the-pack teams.
4. West Virginia Mountaineers (1-0): While it is easy to say “it was EKU,” the marked improvement at run blocking was still good to see, especially since we basically couldn’t run block against even shitty teams last year. Plenty of work to prove we’re ready to compete against the top three, however.
5. TCU Horned Frogs (0-0): TCU’s opener versus SMU was postponed due to COVID-19, it has yet to be rescheduled; but maybe that’s a plus for them.
6. Baylor Bears (0-0): Like TCU, their matchup with La Tech was postponed and has now been canceled. They are reportedly trying to schedule Houston instead.
7. Kansas State Wildcats (0-1): I know what you’re thinking. How am I ranking a team that lost their home opener? Well, Arkansas State is actually decent and not a bad FCS team soo...
8. Texas Tech Red Raiders. (1-0): Houston Baptist is a not good football team that lost their opener to North Texas 57-31. A power conference team should not need late game heroics.
9. Iowa State Cyclones (0-1): One of the big downsides of the 10-game schedule for 2020, is that teams like ISU, have zero margin for error. That said, the Cyclones entered the season with a top 25 ranking and aspirations to challenge for a spot in the conference championship game and uh... they got dominated at home by a team missing numerous starters and having had an even more disrupted preseason due to Hurricane Laura. Yikes.
10. Kansas Jayhawks (0-1): Jeff Long paid Coastal Carolina a bunch of money to humiliate the Jawhawks in their opener (again). Jeff Long into FinDom confirmed.