As Bowlsby mentioned, most of the Big 12’s teams don’t have three full contact days during the week anyway.
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“They were a really good football team before they joined our league”, Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said.
The first is that the Big 12 isn’t expanding “at [the] present time”.
Bowlsby said talks of implementing the rule began in spring meetings and the conference’s athletic directors took it back to their various campuses to discuss it with the coaches before it was eventually approved earlier this summer.
On Monday, coaches said it wasn’t a big deal, with most saying they it wouldn’t affect their current practice routine.
“The way the model is right now is something that I’ve supported and something that we’ve done at West Virginia since I got there”, Holgorsen said.
Said TCU coach Gary Patterson: “I think what you’ll find is you’ll find that there’s a majority of coaches – there’s a false sense of we just try to bang our kids around, but I think all of us, we like keeping our jobs, and we want to keep our kids healthy”.
Of the five Big 12 teams that appeared at the first day of media days, TCU was the only program already completely settled on a starting quarterback for this season. Ohio State, for instance, reportedly sets a limited on player based on the number of reps they’ve taken and the SEC and Pac-12 are instituting an independent medical observer at games to watch over player safety.
“People notice you when you go from 4-8 to 12-1”, Boykin said.
While Bowlsby didn’t give specifics about the enforcement, it’s likely that each school will be required to have safety measures in place to protect the fans, athletes and coaches following big games.
Commissioner Bob Bowlsby announced the move during the conference’s annual football media days in Dallas.
The Frogs are the media’s preseason pick to win the Big 12 due in large part to senior quarterback Trevone Boykin.
“If we name a starter, we’re going to ride with that guy knowing that we have a great insurance policy behind him”, Kingsbury said. But Bowlsby did not stop before commenting on TCU and Baylor not playing in the 4-team playoff field, stating, “As a league, we got left out”. On the plus side, they’ll build around a core of veterans like McFarland who understand the aspiration of “holding teams to zero points every time we play”.
“I’ve personally always thought that I was at kind of a psychological disadvantage”.
Texas Tech was the other Texas school to speak on Monday. He needs someone to protect the football. But Bowlsby noted that with the exception of the Big 10, the Big 12 still comes up for renewal before the other Power Five conferences.
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“We’ve come a long way in the last six months, not only as a football team, as a coaching staff, an organization, as a university, and the relationship with Mr. Pickens and our communication has been tremendous”.
