SB Nation Big 12 Roundtable - 2009 Season - Week 1

This is the first installment of the 2009 Big 12 Roundtable, a weekly feature during the season. Each week, an SB Nation Big 12 blogger will host the Roundtable and submit a series of questions to all Big 12 bloggers. This week, the Roundtable is being hosted by Rock M Nation. Listed below are I Am The 12th Man's answers.

1. Everyone knows the national talking points for each Big 12 team by now (Oklahoma has new linemen! Bill Snyder's back at Kansas State! Baylor might upset somebody!). Give us a storyline for your team that
isn't quite getting the attention it should.

Well, I think a storyline the media may be ignoring is that this football season could possibly be a litmus test for Bill Byrne's career at A&M. Despite success in many non-revenue sports, including three national championships in the 2008-09 school year, football has struggled under Byrne's leadership, with three losing seasons in only six years. With the athletic department struggling to control spending despite record revenue, and the economic downturn causing cuts in the budget, the importance of the success of this football season can't be overstated where it regards Byrne. A&M is now looking for a new president, and new leadership might not look so kindly on the areas of poor performance in the athletic department.

2. The Big 12 continues to be derided by other conferences as a pass-happy, no defense, made-for-TV free-for-all. The question must be asked, how accurate is this description, and is the perception something of which the conference should be ashamed?

 The perception is incorrect. I think many people outside the conference who watch Big 12 teams play may not realize just how good many of the quarterbacks in the conference were last season. While all of the defenses were not immovable objects last season, they weren't all horrific, either. Lost in the jabbering about Florida holding Oklahoma to only 14 points in the BCS Championship Game is the fact that the Sooners held the Gators to 35% below their scoring average for the season, and intercepted Tim Tebow twice. I remember after the 2006 season, many people said the Big 12 had a down year, ignoring the fact that many of the conference teams were starting young quarterbacks. Now, when all of those young quarterbacks matured last season, and began carving up defenses, all of a sudden the Big 12 doesn't play defense. I think that explanation is too simplistic, and short-changes the great players we have in this conferences.

I do not think having a reputation for explosive offenses is anything to be ashamed of; I'd rather have too much offense than too little. Watching defensive struggles where both teams run the same offense and neither team can run the ball effectively because of a lack of creativity on the part of their offensive coaches is what annoys me about the NFL. No one complained about us being an offensively-crazy conference when Nebraska was running the I under Osborne, and Bill Snyder was in his first go-round with Kansas State, and those were some high-scoring teams. I think this speaks to a preference by some people for a stronger running game dominating over a passing game, and since we have a lot of difference-makers in the Big 12 at quarterback, I don't think we should be ashamed for taking advantage of that fact.

3. Over the summer, ESPN's Tim Griffin compiled a list of the Top 25
moments of the Big 12 era (http://tinyurl.com/mzssj8) that stirred up
a bit of internal debate. Which moments for your program were either
overrated or underrated?

 I thought Sirr Parker's catch deserved to be ranked a lot higher than it was. I think it was certainly bigger than an illegal play (#4 Davison's catch against Missouri) or an upset win by an undefeated team over an overachieving team led by a WR-turned-QB (#5 Boise State over Oklahoma). I don't see why they ranked Roy Williams' Superman leap so high; it was a play in a rivalry game that ended up being meaningless because OU lost two other games later that season, to Nebraska and Oklahoma State, to cost them a chance at the division and conference championship.

4. We've seen no less than 30-40 "Best Big 12 Coaches" power rankings in the offseason, but rarely is there the same press for the coordinators. If you had to replace your offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator with coordinators from within the conference, who are you poaching and why?

 I like our coordinators, but if I had to choose two coordinators, I'd go raid Oklahoma State's staff, and take Bill Young as defensive coordinator and Gunter Brewer as offensive coordinator. Young is pretty much self-explanatory; he had stout defenses at Kansas, which isn't an easy thing to do when you're recruiting against Missouri and Nebraska in the Big 12 North. He has been around a while, and has a long track record of success; I expect him to do well at Oklahoma State. I'd pick him up just to keep him off everyone else's staff, if need be.

I think Gunter Brewer is one of the underrated coordinators in the Big 12 Conference. Brewer is the son of former Ole Miss coach Billy Brewer, but has built his own legacy, coaching Randy Moss at Marshall and Adarious Bowman and Dez Bryant at Oklahoma State. He was promoted from wide receivers coach/passing game coordinator to co-offensive coordinator last year, and OSU had one of the nation's most explosive offenses. I think he is a very good coach who doesn't get the credit he deserves for what he has accomplished.

If we could raid a conference team for a position coach, I'd take texas offensive coordinator Greg Davis and bring him back to A&M to be the quarterback coach again. I don't like his playcalling as the offensive coordinator at texas, but you can't argue with his success at developing college quarterbacks. If I had to get a freshman quarterback ready to start in his first college game, Davis would be one of the first people I'd choose to coach him.

5. Time to start our weekly Big 12 Power Poll. Rank the Big 12 teams from 1 to 12. (Note: This IS a power poll and isn't intended to account for schedule)

1. Oklahoma Sooners
2. Oklahoma State Cowboys
3. texas longhorns
4. Nebraska Cornhuskers
5. Kansas Jayhawks
6. Texas Tech Red Raiders
7. Texas A&M Aggies
8. Missouri Tigers
9. Baylor Bears
10. Colorado Buffaloes
11. Kansas State Wildcats
12. Iowa State Cyclones