Which Big 12 Team is Historically the Most Overrated/Underrated?

The recent release of the AP preseason poll features four Big 12 teams, with Oklahoma, TCU, West Virginia and Texas all ranked. The AP preseason poll has been around since 1950, and a site called preseason.stassen.com has kept track of the difference of each team’s preseason and final AP rankings since 1989. The data has revealed some interesting trends on which teams are often underrated and overrated, and the statistics are specifically variant in the Big 12.

Below is a look at the total vote differential and average variance for each member program. The differential is the accumulated difference of preseason and postseason ranking for each year. For example, if OSU started the season at No. 20 and ended at No. 10 three seasons in a row, its total vote differential for those three years would be +30. This table goes back 29 years.

TCU and Kansas State lead the list, and although TCU has only been under-ranked twice since their jump to the Big 12, the jump was significant on both occasions, finishing 14.5 and 23 spots higher in 2017 and 2014, respectively. Kansas State has been relatively consistent, only finishing as an over-ranked team in the preseason once since 2005.

Oklahoma and Texas both highlight the bottom — AKA, the most over-ranked — with Texas actually being the most over-ranked team on the entire list and Florida State and Southern California rounding out the bottom three. Texas has been over-ranked 11 times since 2000 and hasn’t been under-ranked since the 2008 season. Oklahoma’s comparison is volatile from year to year, sometimes being over-ranked and under-ranked by double digits in consecutive years. Take the 2013 or 2015 seasons, where they jumped 10 and 16 spots, respectively, from preseason to postseason. On the other hand, the 2014 or 2009 Sooners started at No. 4 and No. 3, respectively, and finished the season unranked.

With the addition of the College Football Playoff poll, the AP poll doesn’t mean nearly as much.  The hope is that the CFP rankings eliminate the bias that often gives favor to the teams with bigger national brands. But if the AP poll is any indication, that bias isn’t yet eradicated from all polls.