Around the Big XII. Part 3, Baylor

Last entry I was talking about Iowa State, a team that had a young coach that had broken a bowl drought in '09 only to fall back last season, and not a lot of hope for this year.  Today I'd like to talk about the Baylor Bears, a team with a not nearly as young coach that broke a 15 year absence with an appearance in the Texas Bowl.  The two schools share a lot in common in that they're both hard to recruit to and don't spend the money on athletics like their competition.  However, Baylor is still in Texas and that's going to give them a big leg up with the Texas kids, which is a main component of Big XII football.  Their future looks a little brighter right now.  Last year the Bears stood at 7-2 with a win over Texas before falling flat to end the year with 4 straight losses, including aa 38-14 trouncing to Missouri's favorite whipping boy, Illinois.

Head coach Art Briles is a native Texan who moved from the job at Houston to Baylor in 2008 and began the slow process of trying to make a small, private college competitive with the like of Texas, Oklahoma and the other south powers.  Probably nothing he accomplished that first year was bigger than recruiting a kid named Robert Griffin.  Griffin was a highly rated, highly sought 4 star recruit who chose the Bears over a host of better known schools.  He's turned out to be Coach Briles version of what Brad Smith was for Gary Pinkel.  A star on a team full of somewhat average players that gave them some credibility.  Frankly, I'm kind of surprised he returned this year, but it's good for Baylor as well as the rest of the Big XII.  Recruiting has since picked up and I expect them to remain competitive as long as they can hang on to Briles.

Their schedule this season is still very respectable as it will be with all conference teams with the new round robin format.  In addition to the conference games, the Bears open with a biggie, TCU at home before settling down with games against Stephen F. Austin and Rice.  Road trips to Oklahoma State and Texas A&M will certainly be tough, but they also travel to kansas and Kansas State which won't be nearly as daunting.   Their home schedule is very tough with Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech and Missouri coming to Waco.  The only breather there is an Oct. 8th match up with Iowa State.  It's not going to be easy for the Bears to make a second straight bowl game without a little help and an upset or two.  Right now, I'd pick them to go 2-1 in the non conference schedule, and hope for a 4-5 conference record.  The final 2 games of the season, at home against UT and Texas Tech will be critical.  They, in my opinion will have to at least win one of those games.  But regardless, the Bears are going to be fun  to watch and for some reason, those lily white cheerleaders of theirs have always been among my favorites.
Next time, we'll talk about another north team, the Kansas State Wildcats and head coach Bill Snyder.

Basketball season's over. Time to talk a little Gary Pinkel.

Basketball season ended with a thud last night as the Tigers fell 78-63 to Cincinnati last night.  I'm going to talk about that some as I get a chance to read a little more and watch as the Mike Anderson questions play themselves out.  But spring football is going on, Blaine Gabbert just completed his Pro Day exhibition and we have a quarterback question for the first time since Brad Smith's red shirt freshman year.  Since that day Mizzou has entered spring ball knowing exactly who the starting quarterback was going to be.  The fact that we don't know at the moment is due to the fact that Pinkel has recruited well enough that he's making a decision between two highly rated players that held multiple offers before picking the Tigers.   

Brad Smith carried the Tigers on his back during his time in CoMO and never had the advantage of having the talent around him that Chase Daniel and Blaine Gabbert had, but Brad also just didn't have the luxury of Gabberts arm or Daniel's decision making ability and swagger.  The Tigers would probably have won more games had they decided to let Brad be Brad and run an option attack such as Nebraska in their prime.  However, I doubt Chase Daniel would ever have wound up in Columbia on Saturday's if it hadn't been for the wide open attack the Tigers were committed to playing.  For that matter I don"t believe talent like Jeremy Maclin, Will Franklin, Danario Alexander, Chase Coffman and Martin Rucker would have played here, not to mention young guns like Bud Sasser, Marcus Lucas and Jimmy Hunt.  Pinkel made a conscious decision to place the program ahead of the current state of that team and has won 40 games the last 4 years by sticking to that decision.

As I said, I don't have any idea who will be taking snaps for the Tigers in September.  The 2 prime suspects would be between James Franklin and Tyler Gabbert.  Both have been making their case as to why they should be the starter this fall, but that won't be decided for some time yet, at least in my opinion.  I do think the winner will be more than capable of leading the team in what will be a much tougher conference.  I'm excited for the news over the summer and watching how things develop.  I've always been a football guy first.  But as I said, next time I'm going to talk about my feeling following a disappointing end to what began as a promising basketball season.