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BAYLOR IS HERE TO STAY: Baylor is the sixth Big 12 team to be previewed this season, meaning Bill's metrics rank us fifth in the conference behind OU, UT, OSU, and TCU in some order. I'm ok with that, considering the metrics are weighted to include past performances, and our past (except for the last 3 years or so) is not very good. Just a few highlights from the post to get you to head that way (it's also on the home page here at ODB):
As ridiculously impressive as it was for Briles to craft a 10-win season in his fourth year in Waco, his accomplishments in Year 5 might have been even more staggering: he held steady.
He goes on to cite our tremendous losses from the previous year (the top 3 statistical players on the team) as the biggest reason people expected Baylor fall off ... and we didn't.
The Baylor spread offense is, conceptually, what the spread offense was designed to be. Baylor combines ridiculously fast skill position players with mean, burly linemen and smart, interesting quarterbacks.
Just read it.
HOW DO YOU STOP ALABAMA? In a somewhat interesting coincidence (or not, I guess) with the end of Bill's Baylor preview, Nickel Rover builds on his wildly-popular article about how you stop Baylor's offense with one about doing the same to Alabama's defense. If only we could get the two of them on the field at the same time...
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PACE: I've been saying this since the blog began: pace is a bit part of what makes our offense so difficult to stop and our defense so prone to big numbers. Pace matters.
SEC LACK-OF-SPEED: It's awesome to allude to safety concerns without explaining those concerns at all or providing any proof besides a nebulous conception of "common sense."
DON'T JUDGE JOHNNY, IT'S CRAY OUT THERE: I'll just say this: if I had been a superstar athlete at 20 with access to twitter and a vast population of people that adore me no matter what I did, I'd probably have been Manziel-esque.
ROBOT WARS: The latest longform from SB Nation about BattleBots, the internet sensation before there was really an internet to sensationalize.
[INSERT POSITION HERE] U! A look at which schools actually hold claim to the various "_____ U" titles thrown about. We are both WRU and QBU at the moment, I believe. But not according to this.
TWILL IN WACO WITH THE DALLAS COWBOY CHEERLEADERS: I posted this story in a form yesterday by linking to tweets with pictures that really didn't tell you anything. Now you have a real story. The free camp was held in Baylor's facilities in Waco.
That's all I've got. Read the Bill C article.