Bob Stoops, Charlie Weis are Writing Checks the Big 12 Can't Cash

By M. Shannon Smallwood
Alonzo Adams-USA TODAY Sports — Mike DiNovo-USA TODAY Sports

It’s officially that time of year College Football fans! That’s right! It’s Coaching Caravan time! The time of year when all the head coaches are making the rounds throughout their backyards to get their booster clubs to pony up their annual bounty for the greater good of the program.

And every year there are always a few coaches who let the frustrations of their shortcomings give us in the media hours of material to mock.

So far the winners in this year’s race to see who is the biggest lunatic are hailing from the Big 12. Yes, Bob Stoops and Charlie Weis have decided to spew fallacies in hopes of keeping their booster clubs engaged for the 2013 season. Now it’s one thing to attack one of your fellow teams or your biggest rival, but for some reason Stoops and Weis have targeted the SEC. According to Stoops:

“So, they’ve had the best team in college football. They haven’t had the whole conference. Because, again, half of ’em haven’t done much at all. I’m just asking you. You tell me? Listen, they’ve had the best team in college football, meaning they’ve won the national championship. That doesn’t mean everything else is always the best.”

A few days later, Weis said:

“I’m just sayin’, you look at the bottom of our league and the bottom of their league, just going based off the numbers, there’s validity in what he said. I’m just going based off the numbers, I mean, I’m a numbers guy. Just based off the numbers, you’d have to say he’s got a point.”

This is laughable for a couple of reasons. First of all, think about the last time Stoops or Weis had a team that was relevant. Exactly. Second, the SEC had four teams in the top six last year making the entire conference schedule elite. The Big 12 struggled to keep one team in the Top 10 all season. Third, one of those horrible teams in the SEC according to Weis and Stoops actually was one of the elite teams in the Big 12 and are a team who will not be able to sniff .500 in the SEC.

Let’s not also forget that Stoops has turned down multiple offers to coach in the SEC for years and Weis couldn’t hack it as an offensive coordinator. Just two more coaches to join the likes of Houston Nutt and Lane Kiffin as those who couldn’t make it in the best conference in the game. Heck, if you get right down to it, despite winning a BCS Title the SEC was too much even for Urban Meyer who now has a home in the mediocre Big 10.

All these coaches can believe what they want and try and sell their boosters on the promise of greatness, but when it all comes down to winning, no one does it better than the SEC. And the rest of college football needs to realize it’s impossible to compare themselves to them. It’s the SEC and then everybody else, and there isn’t one team out there who can change this because of the strength of the SEC from top to bottom.

Facts are facts. Every conference in the nation has a penalty for a team who wants to leave and join another conference. Every conference except for the SEC. Why? Because no one wants to leave the best conference in the nation when it comes to college football, and that alone means the Big 12 will never be able to match up to the SEC. Ever.

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M Shannon Smallwood is a member of the Football Writers Association of America and the US Basketball Writers Association.

Follow him @woodysmalls.

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