Remember the old Big 12 when it consisted of the Big 12 South and the Big 12 Worst? The league was as balanced as Mark Mangino on a gymnast’s beam.
Well, guess what. Mangino is scoring about a 9.5 on the beam, and so is the old, downtrodden North Division. With the best Big 12 Conference in its 13-year history kicking off league play Saturday, the divisions are as close to lock step as ever.
“Now it’s wide open,” Kansas State coach Ron Prince said. “When I arrived in the league (in 2006), all they talked about was the imbalance, and now it’s balanced.”
How balanced? The Big 12 is the only conference in the country besides the Big Ten without a team holding an overall losing record. The South has four teams ranked; the North has two. The South has three quarterbacks ranked in the top eight in pass efficiency; the North has two.
It’s not even, but Mack Brown, coach of fifth-ranked Texas, says, “It’s the toughest schedule Texas has ever played.”
This isn’t quite new. The North went 10-8 against the South last year, and if Nebraska and Kansas State can find 11 defenders who can fog up a mirror, they will improve. Compared with years past, this is a seismic shift worthy of geological study.
Before last season, against the South the North had gone 5-13 in 2006, 6-11 in 2005, 3-15 in 2004, 6-12 in 2003 and 7-11 in 2002. Only Kansas State’s stunning upset of Oklahoma in 2003 prevented the South from winning the past six Big 12 championship games.
“It was very evident last year,” Iowa State coach Gene Chizik said. “This was the first time I’ve been on this side of the league, and now with the obvious emergence of Kansas and Missouri, it has taken it to a whole new level.”
Missouri and Kansas are Explanations 1A and 1B for the North’s rise. Give an “A” to their administrations. It was only a few years ago when Missouri coach Gary Pinkel and Kansas’ Mangino were on the endangered list. Through their first four seasons, they had one winning record each.
Instead of caving to alumni and Internet chat rooms, their schools stuck with them. Last season they both finished 12-2, won their bowl games and finished in the top seven in the rankings.
“The reality is ‘churn’ is very expensive when it comes to retooling programs,” Prince said. “It takes a couple years to get it going. Everyone wants to win and win now. We’re no different. Coaches we’ve mentioned have done a terrific job, and others will.”
Prince is hoping his new athletic director, Bob Krause, is reading this. Prince has gone 7-6 and 5-7 and while an improved defense will save his job, any greatness will be attributed to junior quarterback Josh Freeman. Administrations have stuck with coaches when the ADs wander onto the practice field and are wowed by the quarterbacks.
That’s the other reason that has propelled the North. Texas thought it had a commitment from wunderkind Ryan Perriloux and spurned Chase Daniel from suburban Dallas and Todd Reesing, a townie from Lake Travis High. Daniel found Missouri ran the same spread offense as his high school’s, and one of Reesing’s tapes landed in Mangino’s lap. A few years later, they’re both in the top 18 in pass efficiency, and Perriloux is at Jacksonville (Ala.) State.
Kevin Cosgrove, Nebraska’s former defensive coordinator, talked Joe Ganz out of a baseball scholarship to Illinois-Chicago, and Ganz became a Cornhusker, Prince found Freeman down the road in Kansas City, Mo., and Colorado lucked out when it hired a coach with a son, Cody Hawkins, good enough to start last year as a freshman.
For an idea of how far the North has come, who are Brett Meyer, Kerry Meier, Dylan Meier, James Cox and Zac Taylor? No, they’re not Sigma Chi’s intramural basketball team. They were the opening-day quarterbacks for the North in 2006. The sixth was an unknown sophomore named Chase Daniel.
In two years, the North has gone from college football’s equivalent of the New York-Penn League to a formidable road block to the South. We’ll know more Saturday when Texas visits Colorado and Texas Tech visits Kansas State. The Buffaloes and Wildcats may look like minor-leaguers again.
But at least we know the North can hit.
Is this Vandy a Cutler above the rest?
If you’re looking for a feel-good story in college football this year, or think Jay Cutler can deliver the Broncos back to the promised land, drift your eyes to Nashville, Tenn., this year, starting Saturday.
Cutler’s old Vanderbilt Commodores, who have risen to the level of mediocrity, could become — gasp! — Southeastern Conference contenders. They are 4-0 and have not been 5-0 since 1943. All the 19th-ranked Commodores have to do is beat No. 13 Auburn on Saturday at home.
This is a Vanderbilt program that has never won an SEC title and hasn’t had a winning record since going 8-4 in 1982 when it played the last of its three bowl games in history, a 36-28 loss to Air Force in the Hall of Fame Bowl.
Much credit goes to coach Bobby Johnson, who arrived in 2002 and changed the mind-set.
“We don’t want you if you just want to come here to be a doctor or a lawyer,” Johnson told . “But if you want to come here to be a doctor and a lawyer and you also want to be a good football player, then this is the place for you.”
John Henderson, The Denver Post
Games of the week
Wisconsin vs. OSU
The No. 18 Badgers get No. 14 Ohio State and No. 6 Penn State at home in back-to-back weeks, and these two games will greatly shape the picture of the Rose Bowl, if not the BCS championship game. Ohio State QB Terrelle Pryor, right, is living up to his hype, but let’s see him do it against an angry Badgers defense.
Big 12: No. 4 Missouri at Nebraska — Considering Nebraska’s defense is still a work in progress and Missouri’s offense ranks second nationally, this Big 12 opener appears to be a mismatch. But MU hasn’t won in Lincoln since 1978.
Mountain West: Navy at Air Force — Falcons are hungry to reclaim the Commander-in- Chief’s Trophy it once monopolized. Both sides feature big-play running backs: Navy’s Shun White (9.4 yards per carry) and AFA’s Kyle Halderman (10.1).
Colorado Connections
In tight with Cyclones
Iowa State seems to have found its starting tight end in Derrick Catlett. The Fort Collins High grad will start his third game this season when the Cyclones play No. 16 Kansas on Saturday. The junior is fifth on the team with five catches for 48 yards but has not made it into the end zone. Last season, Catlett started eight games, in which he had 21 catches and scored twice. Offensive coordinator Robert McFarland says he likes Catlett’s versatility.
Greg Banks, Michigan: The backup defensive end has played sparingly this season behind senior Tim Jamison. Banks, a Montbello High grad, has four tackles in three games this season.
