http://www.vegasinsider.com/college-football/odds/futures/ Texas has the 10th best odds to win the national championship next year.
In my mind, I want to say we start 6-0 and win 9-10 games with a bowl win. In reality, new unproven coach with unproven talent, who knows what will happen. We will probably have at least one suprise win and one suprise loss if not more. I would love to see Herman start it off right year 1 and get to 9 wins (or better) and win the Alamo bowl over a ranked pac12 team similar to Mack's first year.
If Texas starts 6-0 they will have beaten USC and will be 3-0 in the conference including a win against ou. Therefore if they go 6-0 they will win the conference.
They definitely know how to predict how the public will bet. Good to know we can go ahead and write off Oklahoma State....
We'll have to wait and see what they have coming back, but based on that alamo bowl the cowboys are definitely a contender and a possible favorite. Kansas State, OU, Okie State, @Baylor and @TCU in a row will not be an easy stretch by any means. We could beat Kansas State, OU and Baylor and lose to Okie State and TCU.
Oklahoma and Louisville were better than SMU and Memphis. Everyone we beat last year was better than Kansas.
I expect a tougher Big 12 next year. Conferences that have a historically good year are due for a bad year (the aggies bought the sec when stock was high and it has since predictably crashed) The Big 12 had a historically down year (though did finish with a solid bowl season), so I expect improvement next season. Will have to see what everyone has coming back though.
Really? Predictably crashed? The SEC has been one of the top two football conferences for over 30 years. I'd say they made a pretty safe move considering the overall stability. Not sure if and when it might get better again, but I agree It's down this year.
30 years? The SEC was not one of the top 2 conferences consistently from 1985-2005. If it had been, 2004 Auburn would not have been left out of the BCS national title game. Was the SEC the generally the best or top 2 the past ten years? Yes. Though last season I am not really sure which conference was #2 after the ACC. It was kind of a cluster with the rest. I would have said the Big 12 was the clear #5, but the conference had the second best bowl season so I have no idea how to rank the other four. Conferences go up and down and have always historically done so (it usually has to do with the quality of the coaches). The SEC appears on the downward path for the time being. Also, I do not think any conference with "we really want to be in the Big Ten" Missouri can claim assured long term stability. It will also be interesting to see what happens with aggy when they realize they'll almost always be second or third fiddle to Bama/LSU. People forgot Nebraska set up the Big 12 the way it was and was all for the conference until they got tired of consistently not winning big. No one knows what the future holds (100 years ago there were no communist countries and the world was ruled by empires who were deadlocked in a terrible war with no end in sight. Look at everything that happened after). I do not think anyone really knows how stable or unstable any conference really is unless they can see the future. Any university in any conference could get a rogue president that could do something stupid/brilliant. The big 12 is a good example: on one hand the conference has WVU just sitting out there and has just started an asinine championship game. On the other hand, there are still years to go on the grant of rights and things can change before then. So who knows? The conference may have these ten teams for 30 years, add teams or break apart.
Overall yes it has been. In the late 80's and 90s it was SEC vs B1G, then Pac 10(at the time), then back to B1G. To use Auburn not getting into the championship game one year is as bad as anyone saying the SEC was good because Bama was good.
This is not the end all be all, but from 1985-2005 only 4 sec teams won national titles and only 1 did from 1985-1995. The Big East was good in the 90s, the Big 12 was pretty great, the Big 8 was good... I am just not buying it. It is fair to say that from 2006 to at least 2015, but I am not buying it for 1985-2005. Even in 2005, there was nothing particularly special about the SEC.
I know that they have taken a bath on 4 straight Texas-OU games. And all of the big book makers took seven figure losses on the CFP Title game.
It's been a fluke year for the books against the betting public and squares. They've all shown a nice profit however.