John Walters

To be a punter in the Big 12 is to be concerned less with hang time than with idle time. The season is young, but so far only Josh Brantly of Texas A&M is averaging as many as four punts per game, or one per quarter. Eight Big 12 punters fail to appear in the national rankings because they do not meet the minimum standard of averaging 3.6 punts per contest.

Of course, absolutely no one in the Big 12 is concerned about this development -- with the possible exception of the punters' moms. Less punting means more touchdowns, and in American sports, as everyone knows, if you're not scoring you're boring.

Led by Missouri, which scored on each of its first 10 possessions Saturday in a 69-17 rout of Nevada, the Big 12 is home to six of the nation's top 15 scoring offenses. The Tigers (3-0), who are averaging 57.67 points per game, are one of four teams in the Big 12 averaging at least 50 points per game (the others are, in order, Kansas State, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State).

Sure it is early. And, yes, the competition has been less challenging than the People magazine crossword. But, at the risk of alienating fans of the SEC (which, as any sportswriter will tell you, is an annual fait accompli, anyway), the Big 12 looms as the most talented conference in the nation this season. Certainly it is the most entertaining.

Which is why those punters, whom I like to refer to collectively as the "We Just Want to Get Dirty" Dozen, should grin and bear it. They have a season sideline pass to the best college football has to offer in 2008.

It begins with the quarterbacks, the best assemblage of talent at this position that the Big 12 has ever seen. Oklahoma sophomore Sam Bradford led the nation in passing efficiency last season, and Texas Tech senior Graham Harrell led the nation in passing yardage and touchdowns. Neither player made 1st- or 2nd-team All-Big 12. Chase Daniel of Missouri, who finished fourth in the Heisman voting, and Todd Reesing of Kansas, who threw 33 touchdown passes against just seven interceptions, did.

All four have picked up where they left off last season. Reesing leads the nation in completions per game (34.33), and while he is completing 73 percent of his passes, three other signal-callers (Bradford, Josh Freeman of Kansas State and Colt McCoy of Texas) are even more accurate. Bradford, who threw five touchdown passes in Oklahoma's 55-14 win at Washington, is completing just a fraction below 80 percent of his throws.

The numbers are ridiculous. After Harrell, who leads the nation in passing yards with 417 per game, threw for 418 and five touchdowns in a 43-7 win against SMU this past weekend, Texas Tech head coach Mike Leach did little to feign his disgust.

"If you want to complete a ball you've got to throw it. You can't just point it. You can't just aim it," groused Leach. "If we have to, we'll make changes."

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He'll make changes. With the nation's most prolific passer (Harrell) and wide receiver (Michael Crabtree, who had a season-high eight catches) in his arsenal, Leach threatens to make changes. And that's another reason to love the Big 12: the coaches, some of them, are just plain goofy. There's Leach, the eccentric lawyer-turned-football coach who last spring did the local weather on a local newscast. There's Oklahoma State's Mike Gundy (he's a man, he's 41, he wears visors to the office). There's Kansas head coach Mark Mangino, a man so surreally spherical in girth that one blogger suggested last weekend he be used to plug the eye of Hurricane Ike.

If only Bill Callahan were still hanging around Lincoln.

The Big 12 finished the 2007 season with four teams ranked in the top 10 of the coaches' poll (No. 5 Missouri, No. 7 Kansas, No. 8 Oklahoma and No. 10 Texas). After three weeks of 2008 they have four schools in the top 10: The No. 2 Sooners, No. 4 Tigers, No. 7 Longhorns and No. 10 Red Raiders.

The Big 12 has arguably the nation's most exciting all-purpose player in Mizzou sophomore Jeremy Maclin. It certainly has the nation's most entertaining true freshman passer: Baylor's Robert Griffin. In his first two starts Griffin has not only led the Bears to victory but also to an average of 48 points per contest. In Friday night's 45-17 win against Washington State, Griffin ran for 217 yards on only 11 carries. Thus far in his young career, Griffin is the top rushing quarterback in the nation (96 yards per game) and has completed 63 percent of his passes while not yet throwing an interception ... numbers so eye-popping that, should Griffin maintain this standard of play, he might just finish fifth or sixth in All-Big 12 voting at season's end.

Again, it is early in the season, and Big 12 teams are only 1-1 vs. ranked opponents (Mizzou beat Illinois 52-42, and Kansas lost 37-34 at South Florida on Friday). The conference is 6-3 against BCS schools, and that record would only be 3-3 if the state of Washington did not exist (the Big 12 is 3-0 overall against the Evergreen State this season).

Still, the offensive firepower is undeniable. Count on at least two Big 12 quarterbacks finishing in the top five in Heisman Trophy voting this season. Count on no fewer than two, and perhaps once again three, Big 12 schools playing bowl games in January.

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And count on SEC fans reminding everyone which conference is home to the past two national champions.

That's a score the Big 12 can worry about later.

For now, the conference's biggest concern may be keeping its punters' spirits up, while keeping its kickoff specialists' legs fresh. Consider the situation at Kansas State, for example, where Wildcat kicker Brooks Rossman has been on the field for 36 plays (kickoffs, field goals and PATs) while punter George Pierson has taken the field for just three. Wherever Pierson stands is his own coffin corner.

Maybe it is fitting, then, that Texas A&M's Brantly, with his 45.8 yard punting average, leads the Big 12 in punting. After all, with a conference-high 4.5 punts per game after two outings, he's earned it.

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