It’s time to do one of my favorite things and start making weekly sense (as much as possible, anyways) of the Big 12 Conference’s football programs. If you’ve never followed my rankings, I try my best to leverage week-to-week performance in tandem with overall expectation. Rankings that purely go week-to-week drive me nuts, and polls that attempt to shrug off a poor performance do the same.

So, away we go …

1. Texas (1-0) — The only reason the Longhorns top this week’s ranks? Oklahoma lost. Past that, Texas beat a ranked, established Notre Dame in exciting, believable fashion. Charlie Strong has been building talent for the past couple of years after purging attitudes. It appears Burnt Orange Nation may finally have something legitimate to cheer for past October. Scary.

2. Oklahoma (0-1) — Well … at least OU fans didn’t have to wait until midseason for their Sooners to inexplicably faceplant. Nope, this year, those fans can now pray the worst is over and Bob Stoops can motivate his guys to win the next 11, which is doable provided OU can emerge from its usual mental quagmire.

3. TCU (1-0) — It was only South Dakota St., but Hill looked ready to lead the Horned Frogs to something great this season. Does it stick?

4. Baylor (1-0) — We really won’t get a good feel for the Bears until late September, but it’s hard to imagine the potentially program-wrecking off-season won’t have some immediate effects.

5. Kansas State (0-1) — The Wildcats played like a Top 20 team against Stanford — especially on defense. Keep up that kind of effort, and K-State could make some noise in the top half of the Big 12 before things are said and done.

6. Oklahoma State (1-0) — OSU is another program we won’t really know until conference play opens. Until then, enjoy the sweet, fattening diet of cupcakes.

7. West Virginia (1-0) — I know WVU received votes this week, but I can’t help it … beating a sinking Missouri program by 15 in Morgantown just ins’t very inspiring compared to other first-week performances. It leaves something to prove for me. Guess we’ll see.

8. Texas Tech (1-0) — Safe to say, if this was basketball, Tech wouldn’t have scored 69 against Stephen F. Austin. But, it was all guns up all the time last Saturday against an inferior opponent. Congrats, or something.

9. Iowa State (0-1) — 13 freshmen took the field for the Cyclones, including six true frosh. It’s going to be a long season (again) in Ames for the new staff, but maybe it leads to something good down the road.

10. Kansas (1-0) — I watched this one in person. Rhode Island was so terrible that many KU fans got bored and left early — missing the team’s first win in almost two years. It was like watching a nerdy kid smack an armless mannequin in the faceless face with a pillow and celebrating it as a win. But hey, at least KU’s head coach cried.