For what it’s worth, I’d advise you not to worry about what the KC Star is saying. I’ve stopped reading it and linking it here, and I think a lot of BOTC’s readers have followed suit. There’s nothing in that newspaper you can’t get from Curtis Kitchen at 810 WHB, Austin Meek and Kevin Haskin at the Topeka Capital-Journal, and The Manhattan Mercury. For that matter, The Collegian’s coverage may be on par with the Star’s.

As for Rock M Nation’s comments about special teams, they were probably referring to special teams as a whole. Brandon Banks is as dangerous as anyone in the return game, but Josh Cherry is still a question mark at kicker and the punting game is ninth in the conference. Despite Cherry’s improvement, he’s probably not going to consistently make anything longer than a 30-yarder, and we’re still 11th in the conference in kicking.

read the KC Star or the Wichita Eagle, I do read the TCJ because of the superb K-State coverage. But that also means I have to read Tully Corcoran. Although I do it more for something to tickle my funny bone than anything else. And just when I don’t think he could be any more of a KU homer, he up and redeems himself with this gem on Sunday:
"He has seemed like an alien at times, this little guy descending from the heavens unannounced and undeserved onto the Kansas football orb.

What, after all, had Kansas football ever done to deserve Todd Reesing? Why, of all the places, would such a being land here?

Why, of all possible aliens, would Kansas get a benevolent one? He wasn’t malicious. He wasn’t probing. He was small, but not green. All he ever did was throw touchdown passes and get straight As and party like a frat boy with no future, even though he had one.

But all of that is the myth and it will be the legend. Saturday revealed the truth, or something like it.

“He’s not Superman,” Ryan Murphy said."

LOFL

…I was hoping during the preseason that just about anyone other than KU would win the division.

that everyone hates you just because they don’t think you’ll win the North.

Name a prediction that had KSU taking the North…. any at all from anywhere? Don’t forget that a lot of us thought you’d be completely out of it this year because of what Ron Prince did to you, so there’s a certain amount of “I don’t want to be wrong on my predictions” investment in the thinking right now.

As for us, any game is a toss up. Our defense is very very good. Our offense is equally as bad. There’s no point in us predicting the rest of the season because we have no idea whether the offense is going to show up that lost to Iowa State, or the one that scored 27 points in the fourth quarter to beat Missouri.

…even if I thought you were a little rough on K-State’s chance ;-)

You’re exactly right, this is going to be one of the most interesting division races in Big 12 history. Obviously, it doesn’t have the high drama of the South last year, but every team has a realistic shot of pulling it off (although CU can’t like its chances that well right now). To make it even better, nobody can predict any game right now. I look at the line for K-State this weekend (25 initially), and thought “no way in hell would I touch that, either way.” I look at KU’s line for this weekend (7 last I saw), same thing.

What all these prognostications come down to is this: fans of each team expect that their weaknesses will disappear and they’ll go on a late charge to Dallas. K-State fans expect that the offense will get better and the last four games won’t be as difficult as we initially thought. KU fans expect that this Todd Reesing impersonator will pull the real Todd Reesing out of a hat. Nebraska fans expect that their utterly inept offense will start playing like it did against the Sun Belt. Missouri fans expect that Blaine Gabbert’s ankle will heal without two weeks of rest. Iowa State fans expect that they’ll be able to win games when the opponent doesn’t turn the ball over eight times, and maybe that Austen Arnaud and Alexander Robinson will suddenly get healthy. I won’t say CU fans expect that Dan Hawkins will suddenly realize that Tyler Hansen is their best QB, because I think they’re resigned to what they are at this point.

People predict ISU to win 2-3 games and go winless in the Big 12 again….

Now that they are doing much better than anyone expected, lets just run through the schedule and talk about how it all means nothing.

If ISU does what people expect then it’s “ha ha, they’re ISU, that’s that way it goes”.

If ISU does better than people expect then people have to go through and discount everything postive they have done this year. Remember, this a team that won 5 games the previous 2 years combined… Now they win 5 this year and it’s still not good enough.

I just find it funny that KSU fans are worried about lack of respect… Try being a Cyclone fan: no matter what happens, people will find a way to pile on.

I can say that I’ve never said ISU would’ve won had they made the extra point. That mostly comes from ISU fans frustrated about losing a game in that fashion. The same can be said about KU: KU would’ve had over a minute to get into field goal range, and if you check the stats, they were moving the ball extremly well the entire game, as records were set. Had both those two plays gone well for ISU, they still could’ve lost both those games.

But can you blame casual fans? It’s so close, but being so far away. I think most fanbases would so something like this, in fact they do. Last year Iowa had a pretty solid year. Better than most expected, but Iowa fans were complaining on how they were “12 points away from being undefeated” and how they were so close yet so far from going to the Rose Bowl. ISU hasn’t been spanked by a Big 12 team (at least not yet), so ISU fans want to talk about how close the team was to being 4-0 and 6-1, possibly ranked, etc., etc., etc. It’s human nature. I would bet that K-State fans would do the same if in the same position.

I don’t think it’s so much people dissing KSU, it’s just the fact that they have 4 games left, 3 of them being tossups, and people are just more comfortable with the idea of KU, Mizzou, or NU being better (all teams you have to face down the stretch). If KSU can win 2 of those 3, the North is theirs. It’s definitley possible. Kind of nice being in a position where you control your destiny. In general, no one knows what will happen in the North from here on out.

I truley think you can powerank the North in any order and have a valid argument for it. For me, I’m enjoying seeing KSU and ISU at the top right now. It gets the MSM in a tailspin and no one knows what’s going on. It’s a lot more fun, and given KSU and ISU fans something to be excited for, instead of doing what we were at this time last year: counting down the days until basketball season.

But I am still counting on them winning the north. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best… as they say. We really won’t know anything for another 2 weeks.

P.S. If you haven’t done so already – buy your tickets for the KU game and request section 15. Yes, they are really crappy seats, but I really don’t want there to be a cluster of Jayhawks anywhere near me. I don’t need jail time right now, and TB can only defend me in Missouri.

I think most of us are saying if we do stand a chance at winning the North it will take every single game culminating in having to beat Missouri at Arrowhead.

I put a fanshot up here and have commented in my own posts that K-State right now stands as good a chance as anybody. Kansas and Missouri have to travel to Manhattan and right now those are toss ups.

It isn’t that we thing we are going to win the North by beating Mizzou it’s just the final piece to the only way left for us to win it. We have to manage a victory in Manhattan first, at home against the Huskers and THEN and only then do we get a shot at it in Missouri. None are gimmes, NONE.

on those stories are crazy. See Denverjhawk’s post below for a more advised view on the situation. As wide open as the north is, it would be crazy to think that beating OU would end any sort of conversation.

But it’s still a good possibility. That just means one team has to get hot and beat a top team in the south. It’s been a funky year no doubt.

You might want to take it easy on the optimism. A possible 8-4 overall record? Not a chance in hell. I’d be happy with a 6-6 record.

…in the 2009 Big 12 North, pretty much everybody has as good a chance as anyone else at this point.

That said, they’re guilty of nothing more than what corn blight mentions above. Everybody’s conception before the season was that Nebraska was 1A, KU was 1B, and Missouri was somewhere after them. CU was a wildcard, and K-State and ISU were the cellar dwellars. Think about your own beliefs and convictions. Once they’re formed, they’re hard to let go. Those fans came into this season a) expecting to compete for the division, and b) not expecting K-State to be a threat. Throw in that there are reasons to argue that K-State may not be legit — ULL, UCLA, Texas Tech, etc. — and I can see why it’s hard to let go of that conception.

Although it would be tempting to bet on the under on that line.

I’ve got reservations about OU’s depleted offense. They’re obviously not the powerhouse they could be when healthy, but they’ve got good enough backups to score some points. I think OU scores around the 35 point mark so it’ll be up to how much offense we can get against their defense.