Tuesday Takes: Texas Tech’s Dominance, BYU’s Snub, and More!

Welcome to Tuesday Takes, where I give you four takes from the Big 12. It was a jam-packed weekend full of action, but here were several things that caught my attention from this past weekend.

Texas Tech Has the Best Defense in America

After 13 games this season, I feel confident when I say that the Red Raiders have the best defense in college football. They can get after the quarterback up front, shut down the run, shut down the pass, and most importantly, they have talent across the board. Everyone knows about Jacob Rodriguez, but this past Saturday, we saw that they are so much deeper than just him.

Fellow linebacker Ben Roberts is as good as anyone in the Big 12, and he made two huge plays that flipped the game. This defense allowed just 10.9 points per game and finished first in the conference in rush defense with just 68.5 yards per game. The only reason they didn’t finish first in pass defense is because they are consistently up by 20 plus, so opposing offenses must throw 50 plus times to try to make a comeback. We may be looking at the best defense in Big 12 history with this group.

The Crowd Saturday Was Like No Other

Kudos to the Big 12 for putting together a great conference championship. Between the setup, the halftime, and the postgame, it was another excellent showcase for the Big 12 on a national stage. But I also must give credit to BYU and Texas Tech fans here. They packed AT&T Stadium like no other, with over 85,000 fans. Saturday’s game was a sellout crowd and was the largest Power Four conference championship crowd in college football history. To me, that is what really made this game even more special because the atmosphere was electric on Saturday.

Joey McGuire is Underrated

This may seem silly to say after winning a Big 12 title, but I feel like everyone was very harsh on Joey McGuire before this season. People don’t realize that this man was building Texas Tech his own way and, most importantly, the right way. Was it the fastest rise prior to this season? Maybe not, but their program was on a steady rise, and I could see that clearly.

Now, all people want to talk about is how much money Tech spent this offseason to buy a team. Guess what? Other teams in the SEC do the same damn thing, and nobody talks about it as much as we do with Texas Tech. Joey was the guy who took all these pieces and put them all together as one. From the staff to the players on the field, he was the glue in this whole thing. Without a doubt, he is one of the top coaches in the Big 12 regardless of money.

BYU Got Screwed

For all the talk about Notre Dame getting left out of the playoff, why is no one in the national media talking about BYU? What I saw on Sunday was yet another showing of disrespect to BYU and to the Big 12. When comparing resumes, ESPN failed to even put BYU on the screen, which tells me that they weren’t even considered at all when it came to getting into the playoff.

To make matters worse, BYU got punished for losing to Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game. In fact, every team that lost a Power Four conference championship game got bumped down outside of Alabama, which made zero sense. The fact that BYU was 11-1 with a better strength of record and strength of schedule than Miami and Notre Dame, along with having one less loss in the regular season, meant nothing to ESPN or the selection committee. BYU was the only power conference team ever to go 11-1 in the regular season and not be in the top ten of the college football playoff rankings.