Phil Steele recently came out with his experience chart and if you’re a college football fan, it’s worth taking a look, so click on over. What I wanted to do is to separate the Big 12 so we could focus just on the Big 12. A couple of notes, is that the Total Experience Points is Steele’s own formula, the “% TKL Return” is percentage of tackles returning and “OL CAR STRS” is career offensive line starts. The rest is self-explanatory I think.
| NCAA Rank |
Team (Conf Rank) |
Conf | Total Exp Pts |
Senior Strs |
Senior 2 Deep |
Senior Exp Pts |
% LTR Return |
% YDS Return |
% TKL Return |
OL CAR STRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | Oklahoma St (1) | BIG 12 | 75.4 | 10 | 5 | 75 | 66.70% | 74.30% | 70.50% | 101 |
| 21 | Kansas (2) | BIG 12 | 68.9 | 9 | 7 | 74 | 69.00% | 76.20% | 81.00% | 47 |
| 54 | West Virginia (3) | BIG 12 | 63 | 13 | 4 | 76 | 61.10% | 76.30% | 40.30% | 84 |
| 55 | Texas (4) | BIG 12 | 62.6 | 3 | 6 | 50 | 74.30% | 81.20% | 73.10% | 49 |
| 89 | Iowa St (5) | BIG 12 | 56 | 7 | 7 | 68 | 62.70% | 62.80% | 70.00% | 25 |
| 93 | Baylor (6) | BIG 12 | 55.4 | 7 | 4 | 63.5 | 67.60% | 79.90% | 61.40% | 27 |
| 96 | Kansas St (7) | BIG 12 | 54.3 | 9 | 3 | 59 | 62.30% | 75.90% | 69.80% | 17 |
| 98 | Texas Tech (8) | BIG 12 | 54.2 | 8 | 3 | 59 | 70.60% | 71.00% | 52.00% | 33 |
| 99 | Oklahoma (9) | BIG 12 | 54 | 6 | 2 | 48 | 73.10% | 78.10% | 57.00% | 32 |
| 113 | TCU (10) | BIG 12 | 49.3 | 6 | 1 | 67 | 68.00% | 33.10% | 72.80% | 46 |
As I work on my weekly previews of Big 12 teams, it is something to keep in mind and it’s not great that Texas Tech is 8th in the conference, but Texas Tech does have one incredibly important cog returning in Patrick Mahomes. I think I also really didn’t realize how much teams like Oklahoma and TCU are actually having to replace, although TCU is NOT replacing a ton on defense. I also don’t think I thought about how much Oklahoma State is returning and how much West Virginia is returning on offense, but not so much on defense.
As far as Texas Tech is concerned, the Red Raiders aren’t necessarily terrible in any category, not below 50% in any one category, but those returning tackles is something to be concerned about. I think I heard Phil Steele on with Chris Level and Aaron Dickens and Steele is predicting a 6-7 win team for Texas Tech, largely because I think Texas Tech doesn’t have a ton of returning experience. Of course, it can be argued that the defense that did graduate didn’t exactly accomplish a ton.