Big 12 Roundtable: Preseason Edition

Five questions, many Big 12 blogs. Here. We. Go!

There has been lots of talk this pre-season about scheduling. Colorado has arguably the strongest schedule but who do you think has the weakest and which cream puff on your team's schedule do you wish wasn't there?

Blind taste tests reveal that the answer here is always Texas Tech. What matters in Lubbock is not the four non-conference names that appear in the schedule in any given year but rather that the current year's collection simply be as willing and able to choke down 600-yard passing games in exchange for a little cash on the barrelhead as last year's group was.

But in an upset for the ages, I'm going to give this year's Betty Crocker Commemorative Cupcake Pan to Kansas State for ducking Fresno State in favor of Montana State. That was the Wildcats toughest non-conference game and they bought their way out of it. KSU does have to travel to Louisville but that team only returns nine starters, most notable among them a frog-gigger.

As for the cupcake I'd like to see removed from our schedule? That would be Missouri. Okay, fine, New Mexico State.

As a whole the Big 12 has the best quarterbacks in the country. Make a case for your quarterback being one of the conference's top signal callers and tell us which other conference quarterback you would pick to replace him if you had to.

You could make the case that never has there been a better collection of signal-calling talent than there is in the Big 12 right now. For that reason, I have a hard time even as a homer coming up with much of an argument for Joe Ganz, a guy who threw a lot of touchdowns and a lot of interceptions in just a few games. He'll be good, maybe the best modern Nebraska QB yet but all that means is he beats out Joe Dailey, Sam Keller and the admittedly under appreciated Zac Taylor. If at the end of the season we consider Ganz to be the even the fifth-best QB in the conference he'll have had a magnificent year.

And if he went down, I'd tap Harrell as his replacement. Bradford's a more intriguing pick but if we were to truly just swap for this season only, I'll go with the senior.

Going into the season which unit for your team are you most confident in, offense or defense?

Any preseason assessment of Nebraska starts and stops with the defense, so I'll say offense. The running back corps is as strong as anyone's in the Big 12 and the offensive line looks as good as any Nebraska has put on the field this decade. Some people bemoan the lack of a known game-changing wide receiver, but if you have athletes, and Nebraska does at receiver, that sort of thing always seems to work itself out.

Who is the new guy on you squad that will be a household name among your fan base before the season ends?

If we were talking about Big 12 fans in general I'd go with Roy Helu Jr., but Nebraska fans have been basking in stories of camp wizardry out of the sophomore since last spring so, for the Sea of Red, I'll say redshirt freshman offensive lineman Ricky Henry will turn the most heads in 2008. He's the one player on the team that most looks like and reportedly plays like he was transported directly from 1995 and if you really want to please the Husker faithful, reminding them of that '95 squad is the surest way to do it. (As a Nebraska blog, we are contractually obligated to remind you of the following: '95 team was rated as the second-greatest team ever by Jeff Sagarin, trailing only...Nebraska! Deal with it, Herbstreit.)

Prediction time! Tell us how the north and south divisions will wind up.

Most people only see two certainties here, Iowa State and Baylor. I see even less than that. Giving the Tigers the nod in the North pains me to no end as I'm typically down on teams enjoying rare favored status but until Nebraska proves that last year's debacle was truly an anomaly, I'll do it. Begrudgingly.

SOUTH

1. Oklahoma
2. Texas Tech
3. Texas
4. Oklahoma State
5. Baylor
6. Texas A&M

NORTH
1. Missouri
2. Nebraska
3. Colorado
4. Kansas
5. Kansas State
6. Iowa State

Responses elsewhere: Crimson and Cream Machine, Rock M Nation, Double T Nation, Husker Mike.