This one from David Fox at Rivals.com

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Blaine Gabbert

Missouri will contend in the Big 12 North. Raise your hand if you automatically ceded the Big 12 North to Nebraska or Kansas. Don't be ashamed. I was one of those people, too. I thought the departures of Chase Daniel, Jeremy Maclin, Chase Coffman and coordinator Dave Christensen would be too much for the offense to overcome. That was way too hasty an assessment. Mizzou looks just fine with its new personnel. At 6 feet 5 and 240 pounds, Blaine Gabbert certainly looks more like a big-time quarterback than Daniel, and he put up Daniel-like numbers in a rout of Illinois on Saturday: 25-of-33 for 319 yards and three touchdowns. Danario Alexander and Jared Perry look as if they can be playmakers at wide receiver to replace Maclin. Illinois may be headed for another losing season under Ron Zook, but I'm not going to hold that against Mizzou. With the Nebraska game at home and the Kansas game on a neutral field, Missouri will contend for its third straight North title.

Come on man. You're better than that. Ceding a division title to Kansas is one thing, but Nebraska? NU's questions coming into the season are not just as substantial as Missouri's? I'm told Rivals.com has a wonderful database of current and incoming talent. You might want to check it out buddy.

Anywho, the Big XII conference is getting some heavy petting following a very good opening weekend highlighted by Ok. State's comfortable, if penalty-marred, home win over Georgia. This bit of "damning with faint praise" comes from Olin Buchanan.

The Big 12 can play defense, too. Last season, the Big 12 was a league of explosive offense and exasperated defenses. Nine Big 12 teams ranked 74th or worse in the nation in scoring defense, and all but Texas allowed more than 24 points per game. But if the first week is any indication, defense is making a comeback. In nine of the 11 games played so far, Big 12 opponents were held to less than 20 points. Some of those weren't surprising - Northern Colorado wasn't expected to score at will against Kansas and North Dakota wasn't expected to put up big numbers against Texas Tech. But Missouri beat Illinois 37-9, Texas A&M beat New Mexico 41-6, Oklahoma State topped Georgia 24-10 and Oklahoma allowed BYU just two touchdowns in a 14-13 loss. In fact, the highest point total allowed was in Baylor's 24-21 victory over Wake Forest. Last season, Baylor gave up 41 points in a loss to Wake.

Sigh. I don't care to play any sort of "disrespect card" about the Big XII. (The debate over conference supremacy is mostly silly, and generally rules out the most likely outcome that no conference is "best" in any meaningful sense.) Rather, what got under my skin about this bullet point, and by extension this interminable and inherently flawed debate, is that the assorted punditry insists on giving credence to nonsensical starting points like "Big XII teams can't defend" while using as evidence uninformative statistics like scoring defense.