Barking Carnival

There are three things that herald a season of Texas Football.
First, Mack points out that last year’s seniors were selfish goldbricks who couldn’t lead a Brownie troop with a sack full of scratch n sniff lilac-scented unicorn stickers down a footway paved with Skittles and Starburst, but that this year’s group brings to […]

In 2008, Bob Stoops will attempt to win his fourteenth Big 12 Title in ten years and that’s reassuring to a fan base resigned to the notion that their life’s achievements will always best be realized vicariously. Sooner Nation citizenship is more precious than a man’s best acid-washed girbauds, lax child support laws, and […]

Texas A&M hasn’t won a national title since 1939. So when the Aggies went looking for a new head coach, where did they look? Their past. A lukewarm embrace of their moderately successful past. Think of it as another tradition. They went out and hired a guy who was an assistant to R.C. Slocum when […]

When Gary Pinkel arrived at Missouri, he shook up the Big 12 North by being the only head coach to wear a visor in December. The resulting brain freeze explained his 13-17 record at Missouri in games played after November 1st. It’s cold up there, Gary. He turned the corner against Kansas by slicing open […]

Since I don’t really know anything about Iowa State football, besides that Gene Chizik is the coach, I began digging for information.  To give you an idea of how tough it is to come up with anything of substance, check out this link and see if you can make it through two sentences of a […]

Nebraska stares into the college football abyss. They see Bo Pelini staring back at them. That’s when Nebraska finds their new head football coach, and that’s what keeps them out of the abyss. That’s the task at hand for Pelini. The once dominating Nebraska football program has gone missing and is no longer in the […]

If a team emulates its coach, I’d like to administer a DSM-V to Dan Hawkins. His 2007 Colorado team embodied a whole array of disorders: schizophrenia, bipolar depression, acute psychosis, chronic bedwetting, and disassociative identity disorder. The same football team that beat Oklahoma in Boulder and whipped Tech in Lubbock was also blown […]

Overview
After Les Miles’ departure, Oklahoma State’s strategy seems to have been hiring a young, hip alum that combs his hair with a cup of hot fat and a firecracker. Then, spend a couple of hundred million to enter the facilities arms race in efforts to recruit better talent and have T. Boone foot the bill.  […]

Last year I predicted that KSU would go 6-6 and win three or four conference games. They won three conference games and finished 5-7. Yet none of their fans praised me as a raving Wildcat optimist. This year I’ll continue my unabashed Wildcat optimism and predict two or three conference wins and […]

For a historical perspective of the Baylor Program, please consult Huckleberry’s Chart Of Many Things.

Best Team

Year
Record
Season Rank
All-Time Rank

1956
9-2
7 (6%)
792 (7%)

Finishes

#1
Top 5
Top 10
Top 25

0
0
3
23

Average Season Ranking

Last 4
Last 10
Last 25
All-Time

73 (61%)
84.8 (73%)
62.8 (56%)
49.1 (46%)

Worst Team

Year
Record
Season Rank
All-Time Rank

1907
1-3-1
68 (91%)
11349 (93%)

Worst Team (Last 25 Years)

Year
Record
Season Rank
All-Time Rank

1999
1-10
106 (93%)
11219 (96%)

I was on the money in last year’s preview. Baylor […]

Some of our illustrious Barkers are putting the finishing touches on this year’s previews. If you are new here and want to read last year’s, click here. Tentative schedule for posting is as follows:

Folks, it’s been a long journey through the wasteland. We all persevered. We’ve made it. There are no more months this calendar year bereft of college football. This is big news. I am more than ready for THU AUG 28.
ESPN Schedule
Our prestigious and award winning Barkers are gearing […]

Iowa St football: a vortex of suck
In meteorogical terms, a cyclone is an area of low atmospheric pressure characterized by inward spiraling winds. In football terms, a Cyclone is a negligible football entity characterized by inward looking fans spiraling out of control with giddy optimism from a marginal hire. Aside from their WNBA […]

Attaboy!
Mack Brown has the clap. Not the sexually transmitted disease mind you, but the striking of the hands together in encouragement. He can’t help it. He’s a positive guy. He’s Norman Vincent Peale at Disneyland. And this translates into everything he does, and what Mack Brown does best is sell the Texas program. For […]

When the Southwest Conference broke up, I never thought I’d be writing about any of the teams that didn’t join the Big 12 ever again. They were like your high school friend who didn’t go to college. You’d bump into him every now and again, but you no longer had anything really to talk […]

Kansas Football has been electric of late. Electric. The kind of electricity you get from rubbing flannel pajamas together when you’re jumping on a nylon trampoline. Touch a car door? You want no part of that. That’s Jayhawk football flannel pajama electricity. Just like NaNa used to make. […]

Dan Hawkins is extreme. He wants you to know this. No limits, man. He’s just livin’ the dream. When he’s not paragliding off of a hot air balloon over an active volcano in Pyongyang, he’s stick-fighting eskrima practitioners in underground cage matches in Krakow, giving a Great White shark a wet […]

I’ll level with you guys on this one: I’m writing this preview as a challenge.
It’s easy to write engagingly about Texas A&M and Nebraska. Aggies are intrinsically hilarious. Make one wildcat for you. If you don’t know what that is, you’re in for a treat. I used to yell […]

I feel like Oklahoma State has had the same team for the last 25 years. Good to very good running back, above average quarterback, a big time receiver every now and then and scattered athletes on defense. Pick them to go 5-5/6-4, rinse and repeat. When they do find a coach capable of getting them […]

Missouri is an old Algonquian word meaning “the people of the big canoes.” I had always assumed it meant “reliable underachiever” but I’ll go with the accepted etymology from our Native American friends (a people I celebrate in both word and song).
I like canoes. I’m really enthusiastic about them.
Since […]