Big 12 Media Days Reinforced Oklahoma's Status as the Conference's Top Dog
Winning six straight Big 12 Championships will crown you the top dog in the conference.
But make no bones about it, after Day 1 of Big 12 Media Days, Oklahoma was on everyone’s mind.
Though the Sooners were allotted the same amount of time as Iowa State, TCU, West Virginia and Kansas State, the four schools OU shared the stage with on the opening day of Big 12 Media Days, Lincoln Riley’s team was brought up in almost every single press availability.
From their Heisman frontrunner in Spencer Rattler to how every team feels like they matchup with the Sooners, OU is the standard in the Big 12.
Even though Iowa State was just a few drives away from hoisting the Big 12 Championship on their own last year, Cyclones head coach Matt Campbell acknowledged the Sooners are the measuring stick.
“Right now, you know, you're talking about an Oklahoma team, and certainly some teams in this conference that have tremendous football teams and tremendous players,” he said during his press conference. “(It’s) an Oklahoma team that certainly had a tremendous amount of success.”
Despite having an experienced quarterback of his own in Brock Purdy, who Campbell praised plenty, the Iowa State head coach couldn’t escape the questions about Rattler, who wasn’t even at the event at AT&T Stadium.
“(We have) the utmost respect for Spencer. Elite athleticism, elite arm strength, and you see a young man that at the end of the season had tremendous confidence in the offense,” Campbell said. “Watching him grow throughout last football season, and probably nobody had a greater advantage of that in the Big 12 than myself, you saw him early in a conference game kind of working through it, and we know what kind of coach and coaching he's getting there, it's exceptional.
“Maybe as good as any quarterback coaching as you're going to find. And you just saw him gain confidence as the season went, and I think you saw the team rally around his leadership and his confidence.”
Even West Virginia coach Neal Brown, the coach of the only Big 12 team who didn’t face Oklahoma last year, couldn’t escape being questioned about Rattler’s skillset.
“The thing he does that shows up on film, because we saw Oklahoma a lot on crossover film, so we watched him a lot as we went through our Big 12 season last year, he's got elite arm talent,” Brown said. “He has the unique ability to buy time and create with his feet, he's a creator. And he has great players around him, and that's not going to change.”
At one point in his press conference, Brown was thankful for a question about his Mountaineers, remarking that it felt like all of the questions were about either the Sooners or the Texas Longhorns.
It makes sense though that the six-time defending Big 12 Champion would take center stage, and 2021 was no different. The Sooners got all but four first place votes in the preseason Big 12 media poll, a feat Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said was well deserved.
“Oklahoma deserves the attention that they have gotten, and when they have been predicted to be near the top or to be champions, they have delivered,” Bowlsby said. “All things being equal, I think we have tremendous top-to-bottom competition in our league, and yet Oklahoma has consistently under Coach [Bob] Stoops and now Coach [Lincoln] Riley performed at a very high level.
"And just like Clemson and Ohio State and Alabama deserve to be where they have been on a national basis, Oklahoma deserves to be where they have been within our conference.”
Even Kansas State’s Chris Klieman, who has yet to lose to Riley’s Oklahoma, couldn’t escape questions about the Sooners as he was essentially asked point blank how his program had pulled off the improbable two years running.
During the last string of conference realignment, there was plenty of hand wringing and belly aching about the toll that Texas and the Longhorn Network took on the Big 12.
But after 14 Big 12 Championships, including six consecutive (Texas has won the second most Big 12 titles with three total), 2021’s Big 12 Media Days kicked off by cementing that the Sooners run the show.
