Big 12 Power Rankings - Week 3

Three weeks are in the books, and now every team has played at least two games. And it was exactly the type of weekend you’d expect from a Friday 13th/Full Moon weekend. Things got crazy, upsets happened, and somehow, some way, KU won a road game against a Power 5 team. The apocalypse is nigh.

Baylor was off this week, and we’ll see some more teams take next weekend off before Big 12 conference play kicks in to high gear. But all the craziness has tossed this week’s power rankings around, so let’s check out the chaos.

1. Oklahoma Sooners

The Sooners will retain the top spot until someone knocks them off. At this point it’s like KU in basketball, they are clearly #1, and may need a couple losses to knock them fully out of first place. Lincoln Riley’s crew went west this weekend and beat the UCLA Bruins in the manner in which you would expect an elite team to beat a struggling team. Chip Kelly may not survive the season in Pasadena.

2. Kansas State Wildcats

As with last week, this is not a homer pick. The Wildcats went on the road to SEC country, and knocked off a Top 25 (Coaches) team on their own turf. It’s the best win among the conference teams so far this year. And it wasn’t a fluke either. These Wildcats shot themselves in the foot more than once, but had the talent and coaching to pull out the victory anyway. Are we sure these are still, by-and-large, the same players that were here last year? It feels like Chris Klieman jumped into the player editor over the off-season and bumped everyone’s stats up a few notches. Watch out for these Wildcats, a storm is brewing on the prairie, and outsiders are beginning to notice.

3a. Oklahoma State Cowboys

This is where I started to have issues with clusters. You could make a strong case for the Longhorns in this spot, but I gave the Cowboys a slight edge since they are 3-0, and two of those wins are away from Stillwater (yes, playing at Tulsa is still technically a road game). They also have a Power 5 road win on their resume (yes, if beating KU counts as a P5 win, then beating Oregon State counts as well), and if the Pokes can get their defense figured out, they are going to be a legitimate Big 12 Title contender.

3b. Texas Longhorns

The Longhorns have the “best loss”, and have wiped the floor with their opponents in their other two contests. There’s still something not quite right in Austin though, and while improved, these Longhorns still aren’t impressing in a way that the team anointed to knock off Oklahoma should be impressing. It’s still early, and Texas is still loaded with talent. But Tom Herman still has work to do on The Forty Acres.

5. TCU Horned Frogs

Now things get really, really messy. TCU gets the nod at #5 this week because they beat the Purdue Boilermakers in West Lafayette. Purdue has been confusing so far this year, but it’s still a decent feather in the Horned Frogs cap. Gary Patterson’s defense is once again a behemoth, but the offense needs serious work if the Frogs want to win more than a handful of Big 12 games this year.

6. Baylor Bears

The Bears took this weekend off after fattening up on cupcakes to start the year. And we won’t learn much more about his year’s Baylor squad next week either, as they welcome in the Rice Owls, the team that the Longhorns just roughed-up this weekend. But Baylor is still undefeated, which is more than the teams below them on this list can say.

7. West Virginia Mountaineers

We thought Dana Holgorsen took all the madness with him when he left West Virginia this off-season. Apparently not. The Mountaineers looked “just okay” in week one, then laid a turd egg in week two, but turned around in week three and just shredded NC State. Of course, the ACC is looking like it’s going to be absolute garbage outside of Clemson (more on that in a second), but at the moment, that’s still a big win for Neal Brown and his ‘Eers.

8. Texas Tech Red Raiders

I watched much of the first quarter of the Red Raiders’ eventual loss last night in Tucson, and between approximately a gillion punts, arm-punts, and fumbles, I wasn’t sure if either team actually wanted to win that game, or even be playing it. Finally the Red Raiders punched in the first points right near the end of the first quarter, but it wasn’t for lack of not-trying. Arizona is not a great team, but playing at home helps, and it’s clear the Red Raiders are going a new direction on offense. 2-1 right now isn’t terrible, they beat the teams they should have, and dropped their sole road game against a Power 5 opponent. Matt Wells still has work to do, but the sky isn’t falling...yet.

9. Kansas Jayhawks

You beat a Power 5 team on the road for the first time since Ron Prince was still head football coach at Kansas State, you earn yourself a real spot in the rankings. Thems the rules. Though the jury is still out on if these Jayhawks are actually getting any better, or if Boston College is just that bad. Yes, the Eagles beat Va Tech two weeks ago, but that same Hokies squad struggled mightily with FCS Furman at home this weekend. The ACC is just plain garbage this year, and that takes a lot of luster off of KU’s win. But not so much that I won’t at least give them a grudging bit of golf-clap respect.

1(2). Iowa St. Cyclones

¡El Assico! once again lived up to its name (and if you need to know, Banner Society has what you need). Storms in Iowa tried to prevent this game from even happening, but the Cyclones and Hawkeyes were bound and determined to put on their ridiculous show anyway. It was nasty, it was barely watchable, and it ended in just the way you’d expect:

That’s why Iowa State gets #1(2) today — you see, it was #2 for the Cyclones who couldn’t be bothered to see that his own player was trying to field the punt (sometimes these things work out so beautifully). There’s also this:

And this — because apparently it’s legal to mutilate a corpse in Iowa:

Oh, Iowa State. You just can’t have nice things, can you?