March 28, 2024

Big 12 football teams do play defense

On the cusp of the end of college football for the 2016 season, I’m already starting to have withdraw symptoms. Probably because the NFL season is winding down too.

I’m a football junkie. I own it.

Following Monday night’s national college championship game between Alabama and Clemson, I can look forward to a few more weeks of the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl on Feb. 5. After that it becomes a wasteland of sports on television for me. I don’t get into basketball, especially the NBA, or hockey.

I’ll watch Kansas State play basketball — men or women — and I’ll watch a little of the March Madness. Speaking of the K-State men’s basketball team, the Wildcats put a scare into the No. 3 ranked Kansas Jayhawks at Allen Fieldhouse Tuesday, losing 90-88 on a somewhat suspect final shot. I didn’t see it live but replays show a clear traveling event happening.

I really missed college football from the end of the regular season until the bowl games began. While on vacation, my dad and I watched a lot of the bowl games. I really got tired of hearing all the talking college experts say Big 12 Conference football teams don’t play defense.

I even came across one tweet saying K-State allowed 28 points and still won — if you had watched the game, the highly touted SEC team Texas A&M allowed 33 points and lost. The Wildcat defense was on the field at the end protecting the five-point lead and turned the Aggies’ offense away.

Kansas State was the best defensive team in the Big 12 in 2016 and finished 48th in the nation in total defense. The Big 12 had six teams in bowl games and went 4-2, which was third best of the Power 5 conferences. The ACC (Clemson) and the SEC (Alabama) still have one more bowl game to play, but those conferences were 8-3 and 6-6, respectively. The Pac-12 went 3-3 and the Big Ten was 3-7 in bowl games.

I’m pretty proud of the Big 12 Conference football teams. They beat two SEC teams and two Pac-12 teams. TCU came up short against Georgia of the SEC while West Virginia lost big to the ACC’s Miami.

In between bowl games, I watched the end of the NFL regular season. Dad and I drove home from Christmas dinner at my sister’s, got into comfort mode at his house and watched the Kansas City Chiefs dismantle the Denver Broncos on Christmas night.

A week later, I was snuggled up on a couch at a friend’s home in Kansas on New Year’s Day evening watching the Chiefs win the AFC West Division championship against the San Diego Chargers. Denver helped the Chiefs by defeating the Raiders at the same time. The Chiefs swept the AFC West Division.

Now, we — Chiefs fans — wait as Kansas City earned a first-round bye in the AFC playoffs as the No. 2 seed. New England is the No. 1 seed. Kansas City plays a winner of this weekend’s wild card games in an AFC divisional game on Jan. 15 at Arrowhead Stadium. The highest seeded wild card game winner — Pittsburgh, Houston, Oakland or Miami — comes to Kansas City.

I’m ready for some football.

Contact Jocelyn Sheets
at jsheets@newtondailynews.com