Big 12 football: OU, Texas dominance will continue

Big 12 football’s structure after this season — 10 teams, round-robin schedule, no conference championship game — means one thing for certain. The dominance of Oklahoma and Texas should continue into the foreseeable future.

With a playoff game, the North Division champion has a puncher’s chance of winning the league title. But under a round-robin format, winning the title for any of the other eight teams likely means beating OU and Texas.

“Yeah, but we got to beat them, too,” Bob Stoops said.

The difference is, OU isn’t playing itself. Texas isn’t playing Texas.

Stoops laughed, which is as close as an admission as he’s likely to give, and said, “Yeah, but we got to beat nine others.

“In the end, I don’t take it for granted. You gotta beat ‘em all and just like this year, it isn’t just Texas. You gotta beat ‘em all to have the chance to be the champions and we’ve done that a fair amount of times. And we’re aware of that. So it isn’t just that game and it isn’t just between us two.”

But OU and Texas already have established their South Division dominance. Since Stoops’ arrival at OU for the 1999 season, the Sooners have won the South seven times, the Longhorns four. The rest of the South combined? Zero.

Now the North Division gets to experience life like Texas Tech and OSU and Texas A&M and Baylor have. North schools have been playing only three South schools a year. Some have OU and Texas split, so that they play just one of the powers per season. Others play them both in the same year, but that means two straight years without having to play the Sooners or Longhorns.