Northern Exposure

By Big12-Fans Writer Zach Ocken

For the past two seasons we up here in the great white tundra that is middle America have had to listen to every talking head, commentator and message board fan with an opinion tell us how superior the South division of the Big 12 conference is to the North. Last Year the North won 0 games over South teams not called Baylor and finished with only 2 teams bowl eligible. The division was atrocious, even the North champions, a pitiful 7-5 Colorado team, allowed more points than they scored. Plain and simple the North deserved the talk last year, they were completely outmatched by 5 of the 6 south teams.

But that was 2004, in case you haven’t seen a calendar in the past 11 months, this is 2005. Now I had better make my disclaimer early, this is in no way saying that the North is in any way better than the South, in fact the South is still the better division, but not by as much as some people would like you to believe.

First off, let’s look at North versus the south record wise. If you leave Texas in the south has an 11-7 lead over then North. But without Texas, a team not even the South can compete with, the South’s record is cut to 8-7, not very dominate if you ask me. If you look at the one team that played OU and TTU, Nebraska, you will see the perfect example for where the North and South stand. In both of these games Nebraska was competitive but was one step away from pulling out the win, that’s exactly where the North stands, top team-wise, one step away. Many will argue that both OU and TTU posted 3-0 records against he North, but two of each of their wins were against Kansas and Kansas State, the bottom dwellers in the North. Neither played CU or ISU the other top runners in the division. While both OU and Tech would be favored in both of these games, it would not come as a huge surprise if either of them lost.

It has always been my opinion that to measure a division you have to measure it top to bottom. Even if you have the best team in the country you have to have strong teams at the bottom. While Texas is in the National Title hunt the South has 3 teams that did not even make a bowl. The North on the other hand, while only having a top record of 7-4, is sending 5 teams to bowls. When people talk about the top of the pack in the South they will always include OU, but OU’s record matches those poor North teams. But it’s the bottom where the North pulls closer to the South. The North’s worst record is a 5-6 KSU, 1 win away from 6 bowl eligible teams. In the south you have 4-7 OSU, who started the off season 3-0 and who’s only win in the Big 12 comes over Tech. Going up you have a “good” Baylor team at 5-6 and a very disappointing aTm also at 5-6, neither reaching the 6 wins it takes to get to a bowl.

Last and but certainly not least is the performance of both ISU and CU last weekend. Going into last weekend ISU was considered by some the #2 or #3 team in the conference, CU trailing not far behind falling in the #3 to #5 range. On Friday afternoon Nebraska walked into Boulder and thrashed the Buffs 30-3, seemingly destroying their North title claims, ISU just needed to beat lowly Kansas to walk away with it. ISU went up by 14 on the offensively challenged Jayhawks, but promptly squandered that lead and lost in OT, thus sending the Buffs to Houston. Many people use this weekend as the poster weekend for the reason that the North is so bad. One problem though, both teams lost to North division foes. Had either of them lost to a South division opponent this would be a perfectly valid argument against the North, but to say that one division foe losing to another shows weakness of the division as a whole? I just don’t see it.

Again I am not trying to argue that the North is better than the South, far from it. I am just tired of hearing about how bad the North is, when in fact it is just one step behind the South.

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