Trending
By JIM BUTTA
MORGANTOWN -- Media members covering the Big 12 decided that Oklahoma will once again be the team to beat in the 10-team league when the season gets under way later this month.
They also elected West Virginia to finish among the lower half of the conference despite a second-place finish a year ago.
That's a prediction that redshirt senior offensive lineman Kyle Bosch thinks may be the result of outsiders sleeping on the Mountaineers.
"People thought we're going to be average to sub-par and we won 10 games last year," Bosch said. "It's one of those things where I think we all kind of like going into this with eyes wide shut. No one is really expecting anything so we can kind of just emerge as the underdog."
In terms of pure skill, head coach Dana Holgorsen concedes this might be the most talented offensive football team he's assembled during his seven seasons at the helm of the program.
"There's a chance this team could have as much talent as any team we've had since I've been here," Holgorsen admitted. "I don't think that exclusively wins football games. We still have to develop a lot of continuity in each phase of the game, which, once you add 10 new guys in May and 10 new guys in June and 10 new guys in July -- guys that could potentially be contributors -- I don't think you're going to figure out what the overall chemistry of the team is until somewhere in the neighborhood of September."
September which begins with a blast as WVU renews an old rivalry with the Hokies from Virginia Tech.
The Mountaineers' lower-than-expected selection can somewhat be explained by the program's loss of All-Americans Tyler Orlosky (center) and Rasul Douglass (cornerback) as well as its quarterback (Skyler Howard) of the past two years and seven other starters from a defensive unit that ranked among the best in the Big 12.
"I have never seen, in my entire career of playing college football here and playing at Michigan, the amount of depth we have at the wide receiver and running back positions," added Bosch, who was a four-star recruit for the Wolverines' Brady Hoke before coming to Morgantown prior to the start of the 2015 season. "(Justin) Crawford, Kennedy (McKoy) and (Tevin) Bush, they're all progressing at the same sort of rate and obviously some players do some things better than the other, but they are all guys who you can put in on third-and-1 and you're like, 'This guy is going to get us a first down.' "
Obviously, the key ingredients to WVU's continued rise in the league will be the play of former University of Florida quarterback Will Grier and a rebuilt defense that welcomes back two-year starting safety Dravon Askew-Henry who missed all of 2016, as well as linebacker Al-Rasheed Benton and defensive back Kyzir White.
Whether or not those ingredients will be enough to overtake a Sooners program led by Heisman Trophy hopeful quarterback Baker Mayfield is yet to be seen.
OU garnered 19 of 32 first-place votes and tallied 303 points to edge out Bedlam rival Oklahoma State for the preseason nod. The Cowboys received 12 first-place votes and totaled 294 points while Kansas State picked up the final first-place nod.
Texas and TCU round out the top five followed by WVU, Baylor, Texas Tech, Iowa State and Kansas.
Baylor, Texas and Oklahoma will all sport first-year head coaches. The Longhorns replaced former Louisville head coach Charlie Strong with University of Houston head coach Tom Herman, while the sudden retirement of longtime OU head coach Bob Stoops thrust offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley to the head post.
Matt Rhule takes over a Baylor program that suffered through a controversy-filled 2016 campaign.
"I don't think there's a league in the country that has three better new young head coaches than Tom Herman, Matt Rhule and Lincoln Riley," Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said.
The conference, which missed out on a spot in College Football's playoffs for the second time in three years, enters the 2017 season in need of some quality wins as it heads into the non-conference portion of its season.
High-profile games like Oklahoma at Ohio State as well as WVU's matchup with Virginia Tech will go a long way in showing the rest of the country that the Big 12 belongs in the discussion for one, or more of the final four playoff spots.
And, the league has brought back its championship game in order to give the committee a "13th data point" when it makes its selections in December.
"The decision was made 100 percent on our ability to optimize the likelihood of getting a team into the CFP," Bowlsby said. "The finances of it were -- I don't ever recall them being discussed.
"Generally speaking, playing a full round robin and having our two best teams play each other on the last day of the season is a good thing, and a right way to conduct our championship."
The league will hold its championship game in Arlington, Texas, at AT&T Stadium.