Friday Forum – Players Of The Week And Power Rankings

We nearly had a full house this week for our Friday Forum with four of our writers checking in. I guess you could say that football fever has officially hit. After a full slate of college football action last weekend we were exposed to our first take on the Big 12 teams and unless you're the Kansas Jayhawks you at least had the satisfaction of a victory regardless of how your team played.

Here's our run down of players of the week, power rankings and the games of the week going into this weekend

Dishing Out Dimes

 Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week:

Giving it to guys like Hunter would be too easy. Besides, Oklahoma State played Washington State, a horrible football team. Anyone could put up 250 yards on those guys. I'll give it to Daniel Thomas at Kansas State for 234 yards rushing and 2 TDs against a more stout UCLA team.

Big 12 Defensive Player of the Week:

Everyone's going to laugh at me for this, but Jamell Fleming. The guy came up with a critical interception when Utah State had been rolling, and could have driven the field for the tying/winning score. Besides, according to Stoops, his stat line wasn't too bad with 4-5 passes defended, 1 INT and 10 tackles. Everyone played pretty mediocre teams the first week, so I'll give the award to someone who actually made his defense count.

Power Rankings

1- Texas

2- OU

3- Nebraska

4- A&M

5- Mizzou

6- OSU

7- Tech

8- KSU

9- Baylor

10- ISU

11- CU

12- KU

Game of the Week

Obviously it's OU-Florida St. The rest of the games are garbage.

Dogs of the week:  Out of the crappy games, the crappiest will be: Wyoming at Texas, and New Mexico at Tech. "The worst of the west visit the lone star state to get destroyed"

I should mention that I think the CU-Cal, and ISU-Iowa games will be decent, but neither does very much for me. Another slate of boring games, in my opinion.

Jon Woods

Big 12 Players of the Week for offense and defense

- Offense - I know it's lame but I'm going co-MVP's with Hunter, Thomas and Murray. What can I say? The three guys lead the nation in rushing in some extremely dominating performances

- Defense - Aldon Smith. He killed it against Illinois. 10 tackles, 3 for a loss and 2 sacks. 

 Big 12 Rankings:

1) Nebraska
2) Texas
3) Oklahoma
4) Missouri
5) Texas A&M
6) Oklahoma State 
7) Colorado
8) Texas Tech
9) Kansas State
10) Baylor
11) Iowa State 
12) Kansas

- In my Big 12 rankings there were three big movers. Oklahoma State flat out impressed. I felt better about Weeden than some, and I know that Wazzou is epically bad, but that was a fantastic performance and I think they have enough talent on offense to keep opposing defenses from loading the box to stop Hunter. Like I mentioned in David's opponents watch, Texas Tech did not impress. SMU played pretty poorly and was somehow still in the game at the end. I was watching the game with three ponies and all we could talk about the entire game was "how the heck are we still in this"? Baylor looked fine, but fell because others in front of them just had more impressive wins.

* Big 12 games of the week this week

- OU - Florida State - Can't go wrong here. 

- CU - Cal - Great measuring stick game here. If CU can pull off a win on the road we could possibly seeing a ranked Buffaloes team when Georgia comes to town in three weeks.

* Big 12 dogs (bad games) of the week this week.

- All of the others. Seriously, outside of maybe Iowa - Iowa State, the rest of the Big 12 slate is pretty awful, especially with some many other good games on across the nation.

JTE

Big 12 POW Offense - I think it's fair to say there were a lot on candidates for this particular honor in Week 1.  Kendall Hunter, Daniel Thomas, DeMarco Murray, Ryan Broyles, Taylor Martinez, T.J. Moe.  And while I think Kendall Hunter is the obvious choice, I'm going to go with Daniel Thomas.  Granted, I'm not really going out on a limb as they were both named "co" offensive POW by the conference.  But the reason I chose Thomas over Hunter is primarily due to the quality of opponent.  I'm sure Poke fans will take issue with that, especially considering since they (and local media as well apparently) have already begun Heisman talk which after one game against WSU isn't premature at all.

Big 12 POW Defense - Again, no originality points for me here either because I'm going with the same pick as the conference in Aldon Smith.  My wife is a Mizzou alum so I was watching their game Saturday and for anyone who didn't see it, believe me when I tell you this kid is a stud.  Incredibly athletic for his size, a non-stop motor, and quick as all get out.  Landry better watch his blind side when we travel up to Columbia because this kid will be all over the place.

Big 12 Power Rankings - As with most rankings, there are a number of different ways you can go on this.  I'm choosing to go with the most recent/cumulative performance based and will ignore the "potential" of what teams might be.  Not saying it's the right way to do it, but anyone can guess how good a team might be and for the purposes of this I'll just go with the ol' eye test.

1.  Kansas State

2.  Oklahoma State

3.  Missouri

4.  Colorado

5.  Iowa State

6.  Texas Tech

7.  Baylor

8.  Texas A&M

9.  Nebraska

10.  Texas

11.  Oklahoma

12.  Kansas (I mean could it really be anyone else?)

Big 12 Game/s of the Week - Not a lot to choose from here.  The clear choice is OU vs. FSU, which is by far and away the marquee game of the conference and one of several excellent matchups nationally.  I think after the Buffs showing last week that CU vs. Cal could also be a decent game.  Iowa vs. Iowa State is usually a pretty decent rivalry game as well.

Big 12 Dog/s of the Week - You gotta go with Tech vs. New Mexico right?  I mean what did Oregon roll up on UNM last week, something like eleventy billions points or somewhere there abouts?  Mizzou vs. McNeese State is also no prize, hello pay per view!

CC Machine

Offensive Player of the Week - There's no way that it isn't going to a running back this week and there are certainly plenty of options to choose from. However, my choice was pretty easy. In what was one of the marquee match-ups of the week for the conference, Kansas State's Daniel Thomas ran for 234 yards and 2 touchdowns in the 31-22 win over UCLA.

Defensive Player of the Week - I didn't see a lot of dominating performances from Big 12 defenders last weekend which makes the selection of Missouri's Aldon Smith all the more clear. Smith dominated the Illinois offense all afternoon.

Big 12 Power Rankings

1. Nebraska
2. Kansas State
3. Missouri
4. Oklahoma State
5. Colorado
6. Texas
7. Oklahoma
8. Iowa State
9. Baylor
10. Texas A&M
11. Texas Tech
12. Kansas

Big 12 Game of the Week - Iowa State/Iowa and Colorado/Cal get honorable mention but there isn't another choice here other than Florida State at Oklahoma. That's not even a homer pick.

Big 12 Dogs - Sorry Big 12 fans but if your team isn't mentioned above then your team is a dog this weekend.