College football conference power rankings: Week 8

It’s safe to say that things got pretty ugly for the Big 12 this past week as there were a lot of things that they’d like to forget if you’re looking at the overall quality of the conference. One week after the Oklahoma Sooners, the previously highest-ranked team in the conference, suffered their first loss of the season (they were off in Week 7, by the way), the other unbeaten team in the Big 12 took an L on Saturday.

That team, of course, was the West Virginia Mountaineers. Really, we should’ve seen this coming to a degree. Heisman candidate quarterback Will Grier had been flirting with disaster in the previous two weeks with inconsistency and turnovers and it all came to a head against the Iowa State Cyclones with an abysmal performance by the signal-caller that ultimately led to a 30-14 upset loss.

The only other ranked team that played in Week 7, the Texas Longhorns, didn’t exactly look perfect either in taking on the Baylor Bears. Though the Longhorns jumped out to a 23-10 halftime lead, the Bears held Texas scoreless in the second half while scoring a touchdown and having the final possession with a chance to pull off the upset.

When you then factor in an Oklahoma State Cowboys team that was looking promising early going on the road to Manhattan and losing to the Kansas State Wildcats, this week went about as poorly as possible for the Big 12. The only redeeming thing that we saw throughout was on Thursday as the Texas Tech Red Raiders proved that they might be better than previously thought. Outside of that, this week was one to knock the Big 12 down a peg.