Big 12 Teams Avoid BCS Opponents in Nonleague Games

Nobody lines up Bowl Championship Series opponents for nonconference games like the Pacific 10. And nobody dodges BCS teams quite like the Big 12.

Pac-10 teams will play half of their nonleague games (15 of 30) against teams from BCS conferences, according to data compiled by Berry Tramel of the Oklahoman.

The Big 12 averages less than one legitimate opponent per team. Only Baylor, which plays Wake Forest and Connecticut, has more than one BCS team on its nonleague schedule. Texas and Texas Tech have none.

Nebraska has loaded up with three Sun Belt opponents. Kansas State plays Massachusetts and Tennessee Tech. Iowa State has North Dakota State, Kent State and Army.

Tramel writes: "The Big 12 claims to be a great football league. Maybe some day, it will act like it."

The Big 12 fares better in number of Division I-AA opponents. The league has nine games against I-AA teams. The ACC leads with 14 and the SEC has 11. The Pac-10 has only four games against I-AA teams.

Comments

[ChrisH]

If you want to be truly fair about these numbers, add 10 to the number of BCS teams that the Pac-10 will play, since they're the only BCS league that will play 9 league games. Perhaps he should have done average number of games against BCS teams, where the Pac-10 would lead with 10.5, and the Big 12 would be at 8.9.

[Matt]

Also, I love how people have glossed over some of the heavy-hitter games the Big XII does have in comparison to the other BCS-team games:

-Nebraska has to go to Virginia Tech who will be a Top 5 team
-Colorado always plays Colorado State and has Toledo and West Virginia on their slate
-Mizzou has Nevada and Bowling Green for their OOC Schedule in addition to Illinois
-Oklahoma is playing BYU and Toledo in addition to Miami (FL)
-OSU has Rice and Houston in addition to Georgia on their schedule
-Texas has UCF...and that's about it.
-Tech plays Houston...and that's about it.

Honestly, the biggest offenders of a weak OOC schedule are the old bastard children of the SWC that the Big 8 adopted. Even though many of the games aren't with BCS teams...if you actually look at who they're playing, most of them either have multiple quality non-BCS teams (UCF, BYU, Houston, Rice, Toledo, Nevada, Bowling Green) or huge season-defining matchups early on (Nebraska).

If anything, the old Big 8 schools should get props for going out and including some of the top non-BCS programs out there in their schedule. I'd rather have a quality non-BCS team than a weak sister BCS school (aTm, Baylor, Indiana, WSU, Washington, etc) on a schedule.

Mind you, I'm not saying the Big 8 + bastard childrens' schedules are perfect--far from. But it's not nearly as bad as some are making it out to be.

[Fruitbat Bearcat]

Utah backed out of a contract with Texas. ESPN tried to schedule a game between Texas & Wisconsin for this year but the Badgers nixed it at the last minute. Is Mack Brown supposed to take someone's kid hostage to force them to play the Horns?

[hokieg - virginia tech womens jerseys]

Everyone suffers from the backouts. And a team you think is going to be good 10 years from now may not be when the season comes. I argue about this all the time with my SEC buddies. The SEC NEVER plays a tough away OOC game against a BCS team. Everytime they go out west to play the Pac 10, they get slobbernocked.

[kingisjim]

Bobby Bowden will play Texas. That old man is crazy enough to go play in Provo, Utah against BYU this year. And plays Florida every other year in the Swamp. And back in the days played Miami in the Orange Bowl just for fun, pre ACC foes.