Tramel: Big 12 riding high, with great parity and TCU coming off a national-title game
Kansas State coach Chris Klieman says the league is as strong as it’s ever been.
OU’s Brent Venables, with an olive branch on his way out the door, says the best is yet to come for the Big 12.
Depending on your level of grace and how gladly you suffer fools, the rational response to all three declarations would range from “oh, that’s nice,” to “I’ve staggered into a loony bin.”
A league left for dead more times than Geraldo Rivera? The Big 12 is resilient, we’ll give you that. But stronger than 2001, when the conference had four of the top nine teams in the final Associated Press poll? The best is yet to come, when OU and Texas will be gone and per-school Big 12 revenues will get swamped by the aristocracy of the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference?
Probably not.
But as the strange 2023 season arrives, with a 14-team Big 12 — two headed out the door, four new members coming in — the league has a hole card.
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The Horned Frogs. Texas Christian made the national championship game last January, and yes, while Georgia steamrolled TCU 65-7, the non-SEC scoffers had to mostly stay quiet.
TCU beat previously-unbeaten Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl semifinals, putting the Big 12 back in the championship-game business for the first time since the 2009 season.
“The Fiesta Bowl is one of my greatest sports moments,” said Yormark, who has been deeply imbedded in the NBA and NASCAR.
Yormark arrived on the scene a year ago at Big 12 Media Days and started talking big. A New York city slicker, transported to the Southwest, he seemed like a prime candidate to get swallowed by the J.R. Ewings of the Southwest.
But building on the momentum by predecessor Bob Bowlsby’s expansion moves, Yormark set out a course that Midas would envy. A new television deal that has choked off the Pac-12. Marketing galore, from Mexico to Manhattan Island.
And Yormark has been lucky. Big 12 football turned into something quite wild and wonderful. No rumdums, with 13-year doormat Kansas rising like a Phoenix. A second straight conference championship game with playoff implications, going to the wire and shaming the Big Ten and SEC for its lack of competitiveness. And finally TCU giving college football what it so desperately needs but never has.
A Cinderella.
“Last year was a fun season for TCU football,” Frog coach Sonny Dykes said. “We came last year and didn't have very high expectations. I think we were picked seventh in the preseason poll, and I probably would have picked us lower, honestly, just based on what was coming back and the coaching change and all the stuff that transpired.”
Yep, that was Dykes’ first season in Fort Worth. And he gave the Big 12 a priceless gift. College football a priceless gift, too.
The reminder that football doesn’t have to be dynastic. The national-title game doesn’t have to be Alabama-Clemson every year. Or Ohio State-Georgia. Or Alabama-Oklahoma.
There’s room for the occasional outsider. Commoners can crash the ball.
Truthfully, TCU wasn’t even dominant in the Big 12 last season.
Here are some of the Frog victories from 2022: 42-34 at Southern Methodist, 38-31 at Kansas, 43-40 in double overtime vs. OSU, 38-28 vs. Kansas State, 41-31 at West Virginia, 34-24 vs. Texas Tech, 17-10 at Texas, 29-28 at Baylor.
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The Big 12 wasn’t just a league of parity in the standings, it was a league of parity on the field. TCU emerged as a playoff team, even after an overtime loss to Kansas State in the title game, despite a rash of games that could have gone either way.
Then the Horned Frogs toppled Michigan. When a league has runaway parity and a championship-game participant, it's got something going on.
And the sport was forced to look at the Big 12 a little differently. Not only is there life beyond OU and Texas, there is prosperity.
“It's just a deep conference,” said Houston coach Dana Holgorsen, who returns to the league in which he’s spent 17 years before taking the Coogs’ job four years ago. “There's never been more parity than there is right now in college football. This conference is crazy.”
And don’t downplay Kansas’ role. The Jayhawks, who won eight conference games total from 2009-2021, became a threat. They beat OSU, Houston, West Virginia and Iowa State. KU finished 6-7 after a 55-53 triple-overtime loss to Arkansas in the Liberty Bowl.
“Without getting too much into it, there used to be a few layups back in the day,” Holgorsen said, an obvious reference to Kansas and perhaps Baylor before that. “There aren't any layups.”
Anything can happen on a Big 12 Saturday and often does. And still, TCU navigated itself to the Fiesta Bowl, where it took down the Wolverines and provided the Big 12 its proudest moment in almost two decades.
And even with the Sooners and Longhorns having taken the last train for the (Gulf) Coast, now the Big 12 isn’t looking back. It’s looking ahead.
“What you did yesterday is great, but it pales in comparison to what you can do today,” said K-State's Klieman, who, remember, coaches the defending league champion.
Better than it’s ever been? Probably not. Funner than it’s ever been? Absolutely. Not so long ago, the Big 12 seemed to be a conference with only a bright past. Now it’s a conference with a bright future.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
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This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Big 12 football: Parity and TCU's title-game run provide promise
