Alabama at Texas A&M on Sept. 14 & other games we want to see

The 2012 college football season is over and the amateur Alabama Crimson Tide are yet again national champions with a win so boring over "No. 1" Notre Dame that most of us turned it off by the third quarter.

Cut to it - here are a a few of the area related games we can't wait to see in 2013: 

8/31 - TCU v. LSU, Cowboys Stadium. Whether this game is close depends if Casey Pachall is TCU's starting QB, and he has some line protection. If he's good, and TCU somehow wins, his draft stock should take off.

9/14 - Alabama at Texas A&M. Aggies handed Tide only loss in '12. The Aggies will be 2-0 and hosting the No. 1 Tide in what will be the biggest game in College Station in ... decades? This could be a No. 1 vs. No. 3.

9/28 - Oklahoma at Notre Dame. The Sooners lost at home against the Irish in '12 and with so much of ND returning another loss is likely for Stoops.

10/12 - Oklahoma v. Texas. This one Mack Brown can't afford to lose.

10/26 - Texas at TCU. Frogs won in Austin last year and Fort Worth will be primed for UT's first visit since the SWC days.

11/23 - Texas A&M at LSU. The Tigers play Alabama on Nov. 9 then have a bye before hosting the Aggies.

 

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It's official: The North finally caught the South in Big 12 football

As a Kansas Jayhawk undergrad grad, this aggrivates me no end but massive kudos to the Kansas State Wildcat football program for daring to be better than Nebraska.

Perhaps because they never had the chance, but the Wildcats never played the victim card as members of the Big 12 and ran east to play its equally slow-footed members of the Big 10 like the University of Nebraska did.

Instead, Kansas State just got better and now have officially become the best team in the Big 12 conference. The Big 12 is  no longer split by North/South regions, but the Wildcats are proof you don't have to live in Texas, or be bordered by Texas, to win this league.

Since the league was formed in 1996, the North won the conference title game a total of four times, and not once since 2003. (The league dropped the title game last year).

The conference that was born out of football and all but catered to its members in the south - Texas, Oklahoma - now is officially looking up at Kansas State.

Texas Tech got run out of the state by Kansas State over the weekend.
Had Texas played any other team but Kansas on Saturday the Horns would have lost.
Oklahoma is in denial.
Iowa State is Iowa State.
Baylor and Oklahoma State are both rebuilding.
TCU is too young, and not nearly deep enough.
West Virginia has to at least fake defense before it can become a serious threat.

The Wildcats host No. 24 Oklahoma State on Nov. 3 before traveling to TCU and Baylor and finishing the season on Dec. 1 at home against No. 23 Texas.

The Wildcats should have the Coach of the Year in Bill Snyder and the Heisman winner in QB Collin Klein. If all continues to go according to plan, the Wildcats will be the team to reach the BCS title game for the right to get crushed by Alabama.

The Wildcats may be boring led by their boring head coach, but they do deserve credit.

 

 

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The detail in the AP men's college hoops poll that will surprise you about the state of game in Texas

Even with Perry Jones III gone to an NBA bench, the Baylor men's basketball team is the class of the great state a Texas. 

The preseason AP Top 25 men's college basketball poll is out, and Scott Drew's Baylor Bears are the only ranked team from this entire great state - the Bears are No. 19. The Big 12 features two ranked teams: Baylor and No. 7 Kansas.

The good thing for Texas coach Rick Barnes is that nobody cares enough in Austin to complain.

The state of the game has been in better shape than it is now in Texas. Not only is there but one Top 25 team from Texas, but the rosters of the other top 24 teams are not littered with Texans; it's not as if other teams are raiding Texas of its best players. 

Looking at all 25 rosters of the Top 25 teams viw ESPN.com, below are the players who list Texas as their hometown.

1. Indiana
2. Louisville
3. Kentucky
4. Ohio State
5. Michigan
6. NC State
7. Kansas - Justin Wesley (Fort Worth); Zach Peters (Plano)
8. Duke - Rasheed Sulaimon (Houston)
9. Syracuse
10. Florida
11. North Carolina
12. Arizona
13. UCLA
14. Michigan State
15. Missouri -  Phil Pressey (Dallas)
16. Creighton -  Austin Chatman (The Colony); Nevin Johnson (Houston)
17. Memphis -  Anthony Cole (Arlington); D.J. Stephens (Killeen)
18. UNLV
19. Baylor. 8 players.
20. San Diego State -  Winston Shepard (Houston)
21. Gonzaga
23. Wisconsin
24. Cincinnati. Titus Rubles (Dallas)
25. Florida State 

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Big 12 should keep pursuing Notre Dame football

The Big 12 conference is already home to one mostly overrated football team with its own TV deal so why not just make it two?

News that The Notre Dame university is joining the ACC in all sports but football is yet another ripple in the never ending college realignment saga. How has this happened to The Big East?

Texas director of athletics, and de factor Big 12 commissioner, DeLoss Dodds told Kirk Bohls of the Austin-American Statesman today, "I was disappointed. But I thought if the ACC offered the same things we had offered, they’d take the ACC because Boston College, Syracuse and Pittsburgh are long-term friends. They landed in a great spot.”

Click here for the whole story from Bohls.

Even though South Bend, Ind. is not exactly LA and the Irish grow increasingly irrelevant, their football team remains a major catch. Thank NBC for that. Notre Dame football is like much of NBC's other programming - garbage disguised as Must C TV.

The Irish have made it clear they remain better than everyone else, and have no interest in sharing any of their precious NBC money. They shouldn't.

Even though NBC remains heavily invested in sports and needs programming, you do have to wonder how much longer the Irish can remain a national punchline and not be a "big time" program before NBC says, "Let's buy another school." When does the BCS ask, "Why do these losers get a pass?"

If this day ever is to occur, and it may not, Dodds would be wise to keep the lines of communication open just in case. Don't believe any of the contracts that schools sign with conferences these days. There is always an "exit fee" that can either be paid in full, or negotiated down.

The Big 12 has already said it will allow one school to have its own TV deal, so that precedent is set should Notre Dame want its mighty football team to join a league.

Dodds and his friends would be a perfect locale.

 

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