re: Taking a look at the Mizzy CBs

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In fact, one could argue that the pass happy offenses of the B-12 wouldn't be as successful as they are if the CBs were better.

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We are getting into real chicken or egg territory here. I am going to tell you flat out, that the Big 12 pass happy offenses are what came first. It was never a case of Big 12 offensive coordinators going "oh hey guys, I just now realized after all these years that the corners in our league actually suck balls, so lets go to this new thing called a spread offense and chuck the ball a gazillion trillion times a game!"

The Big 12 used to be so ground oriented it wasn't funny. At its inception in the early 90s, you had the Tom Osborne smash mouth Nebraska Cornhuskers winning the national title in '94 and '95 and then again in '97 as a Big 12 team (and if nothing else I know you guys respect NCs). Hell, Mizzou was playing rugged, option football with Corby Jones at QB for our 97 and 98 teams. Offenses then were very SEC-like in our league.

Bob Stoops at OU started the spread usage and then when Mike Leech took over at Texas Tech and installed the Air Raid, things changed. Leech had found an equalizer, something to level the playing field for less physically gifted rosters to deal with the Nebraska type big baddies. It was working, so other teams in our league followed Tech's lead - most notably Mizzou. Pinkel had us running a button down, smash mouth type of offense right up until 2005 when he finally switched to an air it out spread. Now unless the corners in the Big 12 suddenly got much, much shittier some time between 2004 and 2005, then I'd say it was the pass happy offenses in our league that resulted in the big offensive numbers being put up - not poor play by the secondaries. Again, sorry, but I'm not letting you have this one. You can have pretty much everything else, but not this.