Four new head coaches and the other six Big 12 football coaches met with the media in July near Dallas and some made some telling comments.

OU coach Lincoln Riley knows he needs to recruit players in Texas, particularly in Dallas.

“It’s a critical area for us and it has been historically and even maybe more so in the last few years,” Riley said. “It’s almost like our second home base, really, the state of Oklahoma and then the Metroplex and those are absolutely critical for us, for the distance, the number of games that we play here each year, the talent, the coaching that you get here in the Metroplex area. We devote a lot of our resources to this area, a lot of our coaches are here many, many days throughout the year. We’ve got a good familiarity and trust with the coaches in this area, so a lot of respect for this area. We have had so many of our great players have come from here and we certainly hope that can continue.”

Riley and his Sooners will face former West Virginia Coach Dana Holgorsen in the opening game this season in Norman.

“Houston is a really good football team,” Riley said. “I’ve got a ton of respect for Coach Holgorsen. We have known each other for a long time. We’ve coached against each other here for a number of years. He does a tremendous job. He has at all the stops, and I am sure he will do so at Houston. I’m sure it will be a tough opener for us.”

OSU coach Mike Gundy jokingly answered a question about whether anyone could dethrone OU, who has won the Big 12 four years in a row.

“They’ve got good players,” Gundy said. “The last couple of years they’ve had ‘average quarterback play’ and they’ve overcome it. So, they’ve been very successful and somebody’s got to take it from them. That question came up a few years ago about Alabama and the SEC and my response was, and somebody from another league needs to beat ’em and take it from them and I think it’s the same in dealing with Oklahoma.

“Liked that, didn’t you, Barry (Tramel)?”

Gundy likes quarterback Jalen Hurts, the Alabama graduate transfer at OU.

“He’s a terrific football player,” Gundy said. “I don’t think there is any question about it. So, we’re looking forward to playing him. People say, well that wasn’t any fun. We’ve had a chance to play the last two Heisman trophy winners and compete against the very best in that game at that position arguably within the country winning the Heisman trophy so it’s exciting for us to try to prepare against the best.”

Is Texas “back?”

Texas Coach Tom Herman thinks the Longhorn program won’t be rebuilt overnight.

“I lean on Coach [Dabo] Swinney at Clemson quite a bit,” Herman said. “I think it took him, what, seven years, something like that to win his first national championship. Coach [Mack] Brown at Texas was the same. I’m not saying we’re setting the bar at seven years, but what I’m sayin’ is we want to win championships and we want to win ’em now. But we were brought here to rebuild a program and that takes time.”

Texas hasn’t played arch rival Texas A&M for eight years since the Aggies bolted from the Big 12 for the SEC.

“I would love to see the rivalry renewed,” Herman said. “I think it’s great for college football. It’s great for Texas. There’s plenty of other intrastate rivals that are in different conferences that find a way to play each other, Clemson-South Carolina, Georgia-Georgia Tech, Florida-Florida State, Iowa-Iowa State, the list goes on and on.

“… I don’t know what needs to happen because I don’t know what happened in 2011. I wasn’t in those meetings, but I do think that, you know, we’ve got some really smart people in both universities’ administration. We could find a way to make that game happen. I think it would be great for Texas fans. We don’t play a historic rival at home anymore, ever. We’ve got to drive to Dallas to play our lone remaining history rival and for our players.”

Herman heard the quotes from former Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield and TV commentator Terry Bradshaw criticizing Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger.

“I would be lying to you if I told you I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Herman said. “I certainly do, but it’s irrelevant, what other people say about us and our program. It doesn’t really faze us. So, the irrelevancy of it was at an all-time high.

“I do know, you know, our guys file certain things away. We had a bowl game recently where the other team was very disrespectful and that gave us motivation leading up to the bowl game. Sam [Ehlinger] loves to play with a chip on his shoulder, and I’m sure he will use this to crank it up a notch. It is, again, it’s pretty irrelevant in terms of how it affects our program. We’re worried about our program.”

The recruiting schedule has been radically altered.

“We’re at the point now where after two years from now I think we all know December is not the early Signing Day – it’s the Signing Day, and February is the late Signing Day, if you will, because so many kids are going to sign in December,” Herman said. “Am I in favor of it? Not really. But it is what it is. How has it changed? Obviously there’s quite a bit of strategy that goes into trying to figure out when a young man is going to make his decision as to whether you want to bring him in on a spring official visit or a fall official visit or a December official visit or a January official visit.

“…It just has sped everything up. I think you’re going to see probably a few more recruiting misses because you’re offering guys – so many more guys – after their sophomore season just to be able to recruit them that it’s probably not fair to your program because you haven’t seen those young men really develop physically and emotionally and from a maturity standpoint. But the old saying is, you’ve got to do business the way business is done.”

New Kansas coach Les Miles defended All Big 12 running back Pooka Williams, Jr., who was suspended for one game after a misdemeanor domestic battery charge. An 18-year-old woman said he punched her in the stomach and grabbed her by the throat.

“We felt like a strong point was the made not only with Pooka Williams Jr. but with the team,” Miles said. “For seven and a half months Pooka was going through a process and he didn’t have the opportunity to spend time with his team, go to the weight room, you know, just be a part. Pooka went through legal investigation with the legal community. Pooka also had proceedings that went through the conduct board at the university, and he basically understood very much that if he did not meet the criteria that the board asked that this would not last long and he really met every criteria that he could. He has taken responsibility. He’s been remorseful.

“I did not make this decision, but I stand by it and see it as a right one.”

Miles thinks he has more talent this year at Kansas than he did his first year at Oklahoma State.

“I think we have a better talent base here at Kansas than I had when I went with Oklahoma State,” Miles said. “I can tell you the things that happened. We were allowed to recruit to a very significant number at Oklahoma State, recruited very well to start.

“I think that’s the same thing here. I think we will recruit well, over time, and I think you will see that this Kansas team is much more talented than their record shows.”

TCU coach Gary Patterson has six quarterbacks to sort through, including Mike Collins, Alex Delton, Max Duggan, Matthew Baldwin and Justin Rogers.

“I judge quarterbacks on Saturdays, but at some point in time, out of that group we will have to get down to three pretty quickly because you can’t give guys enough reps to get where you need to without doing that,” Patterson said.

New Texas Tech coach Matt Wells grew up in Sallisaw.

“Growing up in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, it’s 7,000 people on a good day,” Wells said. “If you’re not sure where everybody is on a Friday night just look at the lights, which is like Oklahoma which is like small towns…

“I think I’m a product of a lot of those high school coaches at Sallisaw not only in football but in baseball and in basketball that kind of molded me into who I am today.”

Wells inherits a team known for high-powered offense but he wants some changes.

“I think the biggest thing to consistently winning in the Big 12 for my tenure here at Texas Tech is we have to play championship caliber defense, we have to play the play great win at defense, there is not a time that is ever more challenging than to play that in the Big 12 than right now,” Wells said. 

Things have changed at Iowa State. The once lowly Cyclones are picked to finish third in the Big 12.

“…when I first got to Iowa State all of the questions were what color uniforms are you wearing, what’s your entrance song, people cared about stuff that really doesn’t matter, and now we’re talking about a football team, we’re asking football questions and we’re concerned about what’s really important. In terms of growing a football culture in a football program the right way,” said ISU coach Matt Campbell. “I think it’s been a lot more our ability to address the ‘how.’ How do you be successful? What does success look like? How do you play hard every day? How do you show up to work every day and present a football program and a culture?”

How do you replace a legend like former Kansas State coach Bill Snyder?

New KSU coach Chris Klieman took the job after his success at North Dakota State. KSU is picked to finish next-to-last in the conference.

“What Coach did at Kansas State was nothing short of remarkable and I’m going to feed off that,” said Klieman. “We have great facilities. We have a great infrastructure. We have a great culture because of what Coach did. I know I’m not going to fill his shoes. I’m just trying to continue in his legacy, but doing it our own way. We’re going to lean on some of the former people.”

 TCU coach Gary Patterson has noticed changes in the Big 12.

“I think the league has been changing a little bit anyway. I think you’re starting to see people get bigger, a lot more tight ends, probably Kansas State does that,” Patterson said. “I hear rumors that Les [Miles] is getting back to tight ends, fullbacks, stuff he did, but we prepare for all that stuff anyway.

“When you play in a round robin, it’s harder – after three years of playing the same person – you’re not fooling anybody and you’re not going to get a break. You’re not going to go, “well I’m not going to have to play them for two years.” And here is the thing, over the years you catalog how everybody plays each other.

“So, when you have a new person coming in, you don’t have to invent something new gameplan-wise because you haven’t played them yet.”

Only three teams in the country have 11 Power 5 opponents and West Virginia is one of those.

“First of all, I knew what the schedule was when I took the job,” said new West Virginia coach Neal Brown. “When you look at the schedule it is what it is. We don’t talk to our players about it, kind of in a one-game mind-set, that’s cliché.

“It’s a very challenging schedule, if you look at our future schedules, it’s challenging. I do think that we have to, being where we fit geographically.

“I think it’s important for us to play natural rivals, the series with Pitt is coming up, we play Virginia Tech.”

One of the challenges for Baylor coach Matt Rhule is to overcome the scandal left behind by former coach Art Briles.

“I think the young people in our program are doing things as well as any team in college football,” Rhule said. “We were second in the bowl games. Clemson only had more college graduates than we did.

“To have ten guys in graduate school and to have guys doing the right things in the community, we’re not perfect, but if you took a look into our program you would see a lot of people doing things the right way and striving to achieve at a high level. It hasn’t been easy.

“We had to sign a record amount of guys the first year. We’ve had to try to find every way to take advantage of the rules that are there. We had to play a lot of guys before they were ready.”