If he had put his snark at the end I might not have looked at our b-ball schedule so closely as to see that, while it has some really great games on it, it also has a lot of dreck. I can’t really blame Brown and DeLoss for this year’s schedule since Arkie dropped us so late. Add to this the fact that there are others here who think our schedule is weak unless we have the equivalent of UNC, UConn, and MSU as three of our four OOC games every year, so perhaps I am just getting a thin skin at all the griping about the football schedule. My take was that this schedule isn’t any harder than our football schedule has been in recent years, but its easy to look at 8 great games out of 31 and think that is more than 4 great games out of 12, when it is actually less.

I would be interested in doing a comparison of the Big 12 as a football and as a basketball conference. I think the football is stronger than the basketball, especially in the elite. That said, the South in basketball has actually been the stronger of the two divisions during the whole of the Big 12 (which has aided Kansas’s dominance), unlike football where the North was more dominant in the early years.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Big 12 finishes the basketball season with only 3 ranked teams. We should have 2 in the top 10, but after that I don’t think more than one other team will crack the top 20 (likely OU). Ok, we might have one or two teams show up in that 21-25 range, but those teams would likely be just as much pretenders as anyone in football. In football OU and Texas will finish in the top 10, with Nebraska, Kansas, and OSU all looking likely for top 20 finishes (Tech could also be a player if Potts brings it all together within the first 4 or 5 games).

Basketball is just as top heavy as football. Generally it has been Kansas and us as top dogs, but OU snuck in last year and we were down. In reality, Kansas has been completely dominant and except for us in 2003 and OU last year, they are the only team that has had any regular national title aspirations since the conference was created. Missouri was good last year, but has generally been a pretender (to a much greater degree than their football team in recent years). OSU was decent for awhile but has dropped back. Tech had Bobby Knight but wasn’t going to win a conference title. A&M had a few good years under Gillespie, but I don’t think they will ever be a power. KSU had Huggins, but I doubt they will ever recruit another Beasley quality player without him. So where are all the elite programs? Kansas and Texas have been the two most consistent programs (though I would say Kansas is the only ‘elite’ program) and a few others peak their heads above water ever once in awhile.

In football it has become us and OU (and both are truly elite), but unlike basketball three different teams have won national titles since the conference began. The North has become mostly pretenders, but Nebraska has more prestige in football than any basketball program outside of Kansas and if Pelini turns them around they have the history to be a major player. I would say Leach at Tech has created a stronger, more stable program than any of the second tier basketball programs. Even OSU looks to have better long term potential in football than basketball. If Kansas and Missouri remain stable in their coaching they both could be regularly in the top 25 (a rather big if, but they are the only two teams in the North division to look like winners in the Big 8/SWC merger).

Anyway, like I said above 8 games out 31 against ranked teams would be a lower percentage than the 4 ranked teams out of 12 we faced in football last year. Those 4 ranked teams were all in conference, so that would mean that even if OU, OSU, Missouri, KSU, and Kansas were all ranked it would still be a lower percentage of games played against ranked conference foes that our football team faced last year. I don’t give Mack too much grief about our OOC schedule considering the incredibly tough conference we play in. Barnes in most years can and needs to schedule some tough match-ups because the conference isn’t strong enough to get you a good tournament seed unless you win 12 or more conference games.