58 Days to Kansas Football: Kenny Logan named to All-Big 12 Preseason Team
On Wednesday, the Big 12 released the Preseason All-Big 12 Teams as picked by media members. A total of 29 players were selected across the offense and defense, with every team except for the Texas Tech Red Raiders being represented by at least one player.
The Kansas State Wildcats led the conference with 6 players selected, with the Baylor Bears having 5 players selected.
The Kansas Jayhawks were represented by a single player, with Kenny Logan Jr being tabbed as one of the best defensive backs in the conference.
There is a lot to digest here, but here are my main takeaways from the selections.
Lack of Great Quarterbacks
One thing is abundantly clear: there is not a lot of respect for Big 12 quarterbacks. I can't say that the lack of respect is undeserved. And this isn't necessarily a shot at Spencer Sanders. I think most people agree that he is a good by not great quarterback, one that you would be perfectly happy with as your starter. However, you would be trying like hell to recruit over him, as he has had some poor injury luck and made more than his fair share of questionable decisions.
The problem is that I can't look at any quarterback across the rest of the conference and immediately think they should have gotten the honor over him. I know that Baylor fans are excited about Blake Shapen, but he doesn't have enough experience or hype to feel confident that he will be fantastic this season. UCF transfer Dillon Gabriel should play well for Oklahoma, but it's difficult to give hype him up too much unless you are a fan of the Sooners. And Texas has Quinn Ewers, but both the Longhorns' track record and the questions surrounding him after his year at Ohio State make it hard to put those expectations on a player who has yet to start a game at the college level.
As a Kansas fan, I could make an argument for Jalon Daniels after the end of last year, but I recognize that the sample size is way too small to feel confident that trend will continue over a whole season. And Kansas State fans will try to convince you that Adrian Martinez is going to be the best quarterback by a huge margin, but I just don't see it. Ultimately, it feels like Spencer Sanders got this honor by default, which makes the quarterback discussion in the conference very intriguing.
Oklahoma Talent Level is Low?
It's a bit surprising to see that Oklahoma only had one player selected to the team in the preseason. And it probably isn't a good sign for the Sooners in one of their final seasons in the conference. One of the main questions about Brent Venables in his first season was how well he was going to be able to pull the team together and integrate his system with the talent that was there.
But Oklahoma fans are used to seeing their team with a lot of the conference's top talent each year, and there doesn't appear to be that built-in advantage this season.
Lots of Carryover from Last Season Awards
Maybe this shouldn't be surprising, but these pre-season awards pretty closely followed the postseason awards from last year. With the exception of Charles Woods at West Virginia, every player named to the Preseason All-Big 12 team were selected on the first, second or third team in the postseason awards last year.
Honestly, I could probably have predicted most of these by looking at the awards from last year, so I guess take the selections with a grain of salt. But I find it hard to believe that only one transfer was good enough at their last stop to warrant getting preseason recognition. Especially at the quarterback position.
But ultimately, the preseason awards don't really matter. Most people won't remember them anyway. Instead, it's just a way to fill summer stories before the season actually gets started. But at least we get the chance to talk about something besides realignment.
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