Organisms evolve over time. They evolve especially quickly in response to extreme environmental pressures. Some of those adaptations prove to be evolutionary dead ends and die out. Others become dominant species as their adaptation gives them a major advantage in the new environment. Established species can either adapt to new conditions themselves or die.
Football is a competitive game but football in the Big XII has become brutally competitive at nearly every level. Look at the way coaches in the conference scrap for every bit of advantage using scheme, alignment, matchups, tempo, misdirection, deception, disguise and unique personnel. It’s also impressive how diverse the ways Big XII coaches try to create advantage. Despite the conference rep, Patterson, Snyder, Herman and Campbell do a lot of their damage on the defensive side of the ball. We’ve seen TCU’s base nickel designed to spill runs to the overhang men and Orlando and Campbell’s creation of the 3-safety dime. On offense, Herman creates advantage by adapting single-wing football, just as Snyder did before him. Both also run SLOW tempo to frustrate fast-paced offenses but can mix it up with fast pace when appropriate. And then there’s the Air Raid…
Leach brought the Air Raid to the Big XII and forced the other teams to adapt to it. Many tried to defend it but in the end the dominant response was to emulate it just to keep up on the scoreboard. Snyder ran his 4 corners offense to slow it down with the occasional backdoor cut for a quick strike. But the first really successful response to the Air Raid was to move from predominantly man coverage to zone and mixed coverages. Bend but don’t break became the order of the day as conference defenses would give up 400+ YPG and hope to hold under 30 points. Then run heavy spread attacks at Texas and elsewhere began to counter the Air Raid with offense. Ongoing development of spread passing added to the downfield threat and exploited mismatches all over the field. Defenses had to adapt further to keep up. Eventually, Big XII DCs could expect to see ZR, Air Raid and Single Wing offenses in consecutive games. Those who could not think and adjust quickly didn’t last unless paired with an overwhelming offense.
In personnel, nearly all of the Big XII QBs are mobile; very few are NFL prototypes. For the lower-ranked teams this is often making a virtue of necessity; for the higher ranked it’s a deliberate choice. The unconventional Wes Welker redefined the slot WR position at the college and to some extent NFL levels. LJH is also a mold breaker. How many teams would start an Ewok at QB, much less earn him a Heisman? At the risk of dredging up painful memories for our fan base, it’s not the first time OU burned people with a midget in the backfield either. Speaking of dangerous midgets, KaVonte Turpin and Darren Sproles anyone? Also at a time when the NFL is rapidly moving towards the “fast twitch” guys, the Big XII is causing problems with power forwards at the WR position.
The SEC, B1G and PAC’s top teams generally try to win with sound but conventional schemes and superior players. tOSU is a partial exception on the offensive side of the ball. The last man who tried to win that way in the Big XII was early Mack Brown. Brown manhandled the incredibly talented but rather conventional Nebraska. But he ran into a buzz saw of innovation from Bob Stoops, Mike Leach, Venables and Mangino at Oklahoma. Mack was derided as Coach February for years until he too went unconventional with Zone Read based run spread. Then he switched to a pass based spread attack when his personnel matched that scheme. Even in Mack’s declining years, he was still trying with Harsin and _iaz, though mistakenly in the latter case.
You can see those other conferences slowly adapting to change that is centered in the Big XII. Dabo is already there. He rules the ACC with an offense incorporating spread concepts, disguised defenses and maximizes the very good talent recruited. Credit Meyer as well as Herman for the power running spread but his defenses were still very vanilla. Kirby Smart consulted with Tom Herman after Bama’s 2014 NCG loss. Saban has replaced the 360 lb NT he used in 2009 with a guy under 300 lbs. But the changes are both slow and at the margin. I expect those changes to accelerate as Texas becomes more of a threat to their position. OU should have been a warning shot across the bow but the SEC elite haven’t changed much in response. I have no doubt they rationalize it as the Sooners being “just a finesse team” and aren’t taking the one loss too seriously. They’re wrong to do so but that’s on them. Do they really think a jump pass to the FB up the seam is a finesse play? Maybe they should ask their safeties how they felt after tackling Sermon with a full head of steam. It’s going to be harder to ignore Texas punching one of their elites in the mouth, taking away their running game and beating them by being tougher and more physical. We’ll see how they respond
Already tl;dr but it's the offseason. So many aspects to examine. Discuss.