Big 12 football power rankings: Oklahoma State, West Virginia move after losses
By Brian Spaen
It’s hard to distinguish who’s better than the other when all of these teams play weaker opponents. In the cases for teams that played national title contenders, they benefited despite receiving losses.
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Here are the conference power rankings after the first week.
- Oklahoma Sooners
- Baylor Bears
- Kansas State Wildcats
- Texas Longhorns
- Oklahoma State Cowboys
- West Virginia Mountaineers
- TCU Horned Frogs
- Texas Tech Red Raiders
- Iowa State Cyclones
- Kansas Jayhawks
There’s still the top tier of the Big 12, and Oklahoma still edges out Baylor at the top. The Sooners destroyed Louisiana Tech and the Bears made quick work of SMU by getting up 24-0 in the first quarter.
Kansas State and Texas stay in their positions at three and four. It wasn’t a perfect game, but any questions about the Longhorns struggling were answered in a dominant win over North Texas that could have been more of a struggle.
Oklahoma State and West Virginia move up to fifth and sixth, respectively. Both teams had great performances against national title contenders in Florida State and Alabama. Both of them could have left their neutral site matchup with a loss and all of a sudden don’t look as easy as we thought.
TCU moves down simply because of the talent they faced. Texas Tech had the least impressive victory in the Big 12 with just a 7-point win over Central Arkansas, but we already had the Red Raiders pretty low in our preseason power rankings.
Finally, Iowa State lands at ninth. Most of those people that are doing power polls will have the Cyclones last with their lopsided loss against North Dakota State, but losing to the Bison isn’t anything to be ashamed about. They were the third toughest opponent in Big 12 play (only behind the Seminoles and Crimson Tide) this past weekend. Kansas is last on this list because of preseason expectations and them not playing in college football’s opening week.