College football Big 12 power rankings: Week 9

1) Baylor Bears: The Bears dominated again, this time against Kansas, but now it’s time to find out if they really are the kings of the Big 12. Their next three opponents are all ranked in Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State. Of all the stretches left in the season for one given team, this may be the one that most people are going to keep their eyes on.

2) Oklahoma Sooners: Oklahoma played the spoiler this week to Texas Tech’s undefeated season hopes in a close game–which was partly seen on the Fox News Channel–and moved their way to 7-1 on the season. Next, they have a chance to play spoiler once again on Nov. 7 if they can stop the high-powered Baylor team.

3) Texas Longhorns: You have to give the ‘Horns credit, they have been playing good football lately and are well on their way to maybe making Mack Brown’s Big 12 title prediction come to fruition, which would effectively cause a meltdown around the college football landscape.

4) Texas Tech Red Raiders: It was fun while it lasted, but Kliff Kingsbury and his team’s undefeated hopes were dashed on Saturday by Oklahoma. But, they still showed a lot in defeat, which also shows that this team isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

5) Oklahoma State Cowboys: The Cowboys handled a mediocre Iowa State team, which was expected, but they also showed that they don’t have the quarterback position completely figured out just yet. Clint Chelf was not very good at all down the stretch, leaving Oklahoma State to rely heavily on its run game.

6) Kansas State Wildcats: With their top receiving threats back in Travis Lockett and Tramaine Thompson, the Wildcats showed what they’re really capable of doing as they routed West Virginia, 35-12. Bill Snyder now has this team in a position, once again in his historic career, to make some noise in the latter part of the season here.

7) West Virginia Mountaineers: At 3-5, there’s a lot of questions to be answered in Morgantown. With the reported loss of their AD Oliver Luck to Texas, there’s no telling how or when those questions will be answered. At this point, getting three more victories to gain bowl eligibility seems almost unattainable.

8) TCU Horned Frogs: The nightmare for the preseason favorite in the Big 12 got even worse this past weekend in a lopsided loss to Texas. Even with the return of Casey Pachall, the Frogs couldn’t really get anything going in any facet of the game and now may be just looking forward to the offseason to regroup.

9) Iowa State Cyclones: Boy, you really wonder what could have happened to this team and their confidence had they won that game against Texas a few weeks ago. But, they didn’t and they were blown out again to fall to 1-6 on the year. Head coach Paul Rhoads, though, has this team fighting and supposedly has some good pieces coming in with his recruiting classes.

10) Kansas Jayhawks: College basketball season is right around the corner and you have Andrew Wiggins. Cheer up, Jayhawk fans.