Football In Texas and The Great Plains

So for as long as the few of you have read this blog, you’ve heard nothing but, “SEC owns (insert conference, team, political ideology here).”

SEC Football is still the most competitive grouping of sports teams, probably in the world. I mean, look at what happened last weekend…Georgia struggled with a struggling Tennessee team and could have lost that game. LSU was absolutely killed by Florida, and still, Vanderbilt is still atop the SEC East, even after losing to Mississippi State.

Eight hours before Tim Tebow jumping jacked his way off the field in the Swamp, Texas pulled what some think could be the biggest upset of the year. Personally, I gave Texas no chance, whatsoever, to win that game. In fact, I think it was my #9 game overall in confidence in my pick’em league.

Texas was flat out impressive. They played just as fast as OU and purely matched their athleticism. Colt McCoy, who No Owens has never really understood, and still may not, looked great. He’s the cross between Major Applewhite and Vince Young; a guy who can beat you with great athletic ability, but has that swagger that Applewhite that gets his team right where they need to be…behind him, following him to a big win. Was their defense questionable? Sure, but who didn’t expect that to happen? They found every way to beat OU, and did so in a big way. That is one balanced team.

I think my #10 confidence game was Mizzou. Yeah, as you can read, I wasn’t too productive this week. Who thought, a 41 year old man could figure out how to slow down Chase Daniel? I didn’t see the game but from what I understand, all of Chase Daniel’s interceptions came in the red zone. Ok, so Mizzou got there, moved the ball, but if you can get your guys to make plays when they need them most, you show true grit. And grit is what it takes to win big games. Ask Colt McCoy.

So the question right now is this…without internet sitting here in 16F, I don’t have the rankings in front of me. So, honestly, since I have been in either a car or airplane for about every hour I haven’t been in my bed for the past couple of days, I don’t know who the #1 team in the nation is. But what I do know, is there are probably as many Big 12 teams in the top 25 as there are SEC teams. Top to bottom, is the Big 12 as strong as the SEC? I mean, A&M is bad. Baylor is Baylor and Tennessee is winless in conference play. Something tells me, I mean, possibly, that the Vols could beat the bottom teams in the Big 12, but at this point, they’d probably be better off with Bud Kilmer as their coach. Paul Walker knows he’s available.

But…here at No Owens, who cares? We care about championships. And the Big 12 this year might be better poised to make a run at a BCS Title than any team in the SEC. It’s just getting too rugged in the SEC…Georgia isn’t as good as advertised, LSU forgot how to play, and Percy Harvin is becoming healthy all while we don’t really know what this Alabama thing is. We will see what happens when they have to line up and go up against an LSU d-line, and that beast, 94 I think, who plays DT for Auburn. Who knew that JPW would be the most impressive QB in the SEC? Most certainly not me…nor RePete Smith. But you have a lot of Big 12 teams sitting quite pretty waiting for the SEC teams to continue to lose…and what if something happens where Penn State goes unblemished? What a disaster that would be.

The problem here is that no one really looks like the #1 team in the country. All while USC, lost early…yippee. But if any of the teams look poised to be the champs, you’ve got to look to the Big12…even after Tech played out a tough win this past weekend. What’s going to happen? Who knows, but if you’re a Big 12 fan, you have to like where things are going.