Big 12’s Abysmal Showing in NFL Draft Easy to Explain, Tough to Swallow

As Kyle Cox pointed out in his excellent piece on Mike Gundy’s production of NFL talent, the Big 12 had fewer guys drafted (14) than the AAC. That is to say, the football conference Tulsa is in had more players taken in the NFL Draft than the conference Oklahoma State and Oklahoma are in.

Feel free to use these liberally: ???

On the surface this makes sense though, right? I mean, not the AAC thing, but the idea that the Big 12 would lag behind the other four Power 5 conferences when it comes to total NFL Draft picks.

1. SEC, 53 picks
2. ACC, 43
3. Pac-12, 36
4. Big Ten, 35
5. AAC, 15
6. Big 12, 14

It all comes down to recruiting. Four years ago, when the seniors entering the 2017 draft would have been freshmen, the Big 12 had zero teams in the top 15 of the 247 recruiting rankings.

The year after that (when these outgoing seniors would have been sophomores and outgoing juniors would have been freshmen), the Big 12 had one team in the top 15. They had just two in the top 25 both years (Texas and OU).

This is a trend that continued in 2017, according to SB Nation. Look at how few blue chip players (you know, the ones that get drafted in the first round) the Big 12 signed in 2017.

Fewer 4-star and 5-star players means fewer pros generally.

But it also feels like there is a bit of a bias going on here. For example, it’s difficult to shake the following thought: If a DB from Alabama and a DB from TCU are both at the NFL Combine and perform similarly, NFL front offices are almost always going to skew towards the Alabama kid, all other factors being equal, right?

I wouldn’t blame them. Alabama has produced innumerable pros. TCU has produced a few. There is this sort of self-perpetuating bias when people keep chirping that your conference is terrible. Fewer NFL picks leads to fewer blue-chip players leads to fewer NFL picks … and around and around we go.

I can’t help but believe that there is a sort of built-in hurdle for Big 12 players to overcome when it comes to the NFL Draft.

But what intrigues me is that the results on the field don’t really back up that the Big 12 has fewer good and/or great players. The Big 12’s winning percentage against other conferences in the 2010s looks like this:

• SEC — 38 percent
• Pac-12 — 55 percent
• Big 10 — 58 percent
• ACC — 59 percent

The Big 12 has been the second-best conference on the field in terms of wins and losses since 2010 (#JustFacts). In recent years those numbers have dipped a bit, but the idea that the Big 12 is this cellar-dwelling conference in major college football is just … well … it ain’t true!

Now teams beat other teams for more reasons than just better players, but that is the primary reason. And it’s interesting, it seems like schools such as Texas A&M, LSU and Tennessee are better at putting players into the NFL but not as good at turning them into winning teams on the field in college.

As my man Ian Boyd pointed out in this excellent piece on the Big 12 and the NFL Draft, we can’t judge everything based on one year. Heck, CBS Sports projects twice as many Big 12 players going in Round 1 next year (4) as went in the first two rounds in 2017 (2).

So this should correct itself.

But, as is so often the case in college sports, it all goes back to recruiting. For the Big 12 to stay relevant and to keep putting kids into the pros (which is what the top high school recruits care most about), you have to recruit better. Thankfully, Oklahoma State is starting to do that.