As the athletic year has come to a close in the Big 12, and with AhearnAlley giving a recap of how K-State's minor sports did over the course of the year, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at how things shook out overall in the Big 12 this year. As my method of calculation, I opted to use the same formula used by the Capital One Cup: a weighted scale for the top ten in each event, starting at 60 for the high-profile events (football, volleyball, basketball, soccer, outdoor track, and the stickball sports), 20 for the lesser events. The final results are based solely on the final Big 12 championship standings (i.e., no extra credit for NCAA Championship performance). Point adjustments to the Cap One Cup formula were made for sports which the Big 12 sponsors, but only 3-6 teams participate; as there are no sports in which only 7 teams participate, I just gave zero points to the schools not taking part in those sports with 8-9 entries.
Not only did K-State not have that great a year, but the final results are going to make you all very angry. Very, very angry.
I'll let that sink in for a moment before getting to the final scores.
A&M was bolstered by Big 12 championships in soccer, men's outdoor track, men's golf, and men's indoor track, plus second- or third-place finishes in the big-gun sports of women's basketball, outdoor women's track, and volleyball. It was a very tight race at the top, with A&M barely squeaking past Texas; only six points separated the two, and those six points came courtesy of A&M's second-place finish in equestrian... which Texas doesn't offer.
Worse, probably, is that A&M and Missouri finished one-two in the men's sports, which is just galling given the fact that they're departing the conference. Yes, football drives the bus, and in that respect we're not going to miss them that much... but on an overall athletic level, their departure is actually a lot more damaging than anyone really seems to have considered.
| Overall | Men | Women | |||
| Texas A&M | 393 | Texas A&M | 215 | Texas | 225 |
| Texas | 387 | Missouri | 190 | Texas A&M | 172 |
| Oklahoma | 317 | Oklahoma State | 166 | Oklahoma | 164 |
| Missouri | 289 | Texas | 162 | Baylor | 138 |
| Baylor | 284 | Oklahoma | 153 | Iowa State | 109 |
| Oklahoma State | 257 | Baylor | 142 | Missouri | 99 |
| Kansas State | 184 | Kansas State | 103 | Kansas | 94 |
| Kansas | 183 | Kansas | 89 | Oklahoma State |
81 |
| Iowa State | 159 | Texas Tech | 67 | Texas Tech |
78 |
| Texas Tech | 145 | Iowa State | 50 | Kansas State |
76 |
Things of note here: Iowa State's men's programs this year were just horrible. The conventional wisdom was that Texas Tech had stunk up the joint, and that perception was correct; the only problem was that the perception was widely based on the idea that Tech had stunk in football, basketball, and baseball. Well, Iowa State's men performed even worse. (You might argue that Iowa State doesn't have baseball, and thus got no points for it... but Texas Tech only got six points for baseball, so that argument pretty much dies on the vine right there.)
Even more atrocious than Iowa State's men, however, were Oklahoma State's women, whose high point in terms of point accumulation was finishing sixth in softball. Their high point in real terms was a third-place finish in cross country. You decide for yourself which is more humiliating. A data error made this paragraph irrelevant; I forgot to input the 36 points for Oklahoma State's runner-up finish in women's soccer. Of course, that just drives K-State's women's program to dead last...
As for our Wildcats, it was a pretty middling year. Overall, we were (as always) hampered by the lack of a soccer team or a softball team, both of which count as "big" events in the Capital One scoring. Even then, a mid-table finish in both sports would only have served to move the women up one spot in the standings, and close both the overall and men's gaps between fifth and sixth place. The real damage to the Cats came as a result of mediocre finishes in men's basketball and baseball, and a brutally poor performance in women's outdoor track.