As I was researching a post, I ended up with this chart. The numbers are from Football Outsiders and shows each team's F/+ rank from 2007 through the 2011 season. The 2012 number was Bill C's early projection that can be found at Football Study Hall from a post in April. The new FO Almanac probably has the updated projections but these work for now.
*Key: Yellow means ranked 1-20, Orange 21-40, red 41-60, blue 61-80, purple 81-100, and green is 100+
A few things immediately came to mind when looking at this.
- The path to winning is a steep one. Beat your three non-con opponents and you still have find wins against three of these teams to even hope for a bowl. The average projected rank of Big 12 opponents for the Jayhawks is 26.7 and that includes an Iowa State at 85. Take them out and the remainder's average is 19.5.
- Baylor shows a slow but steady climb to a good program. The loss of RGIII might hurt more than the projections forecast here but their five year improvement is encouraging and might give Kansas a target through the Weis era.
- TCU has been very highly thought of by the F/+ projections. It will be interesting to see how they fare entering the Big 12. As we can see, there aren't many easy weeks.
- Think Texas Tech is missing Mike Leach yet? Or will it take another year or two when Washington State is rolling?