Missouri coach Gary Pinkel has a theory that football is the truest team sport ever invented.
"You've got 180-pound backs and 340-pound tackles," he said, "and they all have different fundamentals and they all have to work and coincide together."
Yet on any football squad, Pinkel argues, an exception must be made to the all-blend-together idea at one position.
Quarterback.
"That guy has to be special if you want to win," said Pinkel, who coached eight NFL quarterbacks. "That guy has to be a difference-maker.
"Go back to anybody who has won the Big 12 championship or been to the BCS or won 10-plus games, and generally the quarterback has played very, very well."
Under that theory, the Big 12 may be in line for its best season ever.
Ten league schools have their starting quarterback returning, and there is high quality among the quantity.
How deep is the signal-calling talent? Check these facts:
• Oklahoma sophomore Sam Bradford led the nation in passing efficiency in 2007 (36 touchdowns, eight interceptions, 69.5 percent completion rate), and his only postseason honor was Big 12 honorable mention.
• Texas Tech senior Graham Harrell led the nation in total offense at 431.8 yards a game and threw for 48 touchdowns. He, too, was only honorable mention.
• Oklahoma State junior Zac Robinson broke the Cowboys' single-season record for total offense and had a hand in 32 touchdowns, yet he got no postseason mention.
• Texas junior Colt McCoy, runner-up for Big 12 offensive player of the year as a freshman and 22nd nationally last year in total offense, also was ignored in postseason honors.
The second-team All-Big 12 quarterback was Kansas junior Todd Reesing, who led the Jayhawks to a school-record 12-1 season and their first win in one of the "Big Five" bowls.
Missouri senior Chase Daniel was voted first-team All-Big 12 and was fourth in Heisman Trophy balloting after leading the Tigers (12-2) to the No. 1 spot in the polls in late November and their highest Associated Press poll finish ever at No. 4.
The firepower ignited by Big 12 quarterbacks left Kansas State coach Ron Prince in awe.
"I could never have imagined," Prince said, "that scoring 36 points a game (like we did) would be sixth in the league."
In the end, the Big 12 led all conferences with four teams in the final Top 10 — No. 4 and 5 Missouri, No. 7 Kansas, No. 8 Oklahoma and No. 10 Texas. No other league had more than two.
All four of those teams, along with No. 22 and 23 Texas Tech, return their starting quarterback.
"This will be the best-balanced league in the 10 years we've been at Texas," Longhorns coach Mack Brown said. "It's because everybody is better, and that's because of the quarterbacks.
"You can no longer plan to win a game in this league. You've got to earn the right to win that game before you can count it."
The quarterback statistics have gone Xbox-like in part because of no-huddle, spread offenses. But seeing more teams use that style regularly doesn't make preparation for Big 12 quarterbacks any easier.
"All these teams are very nuanced," Prince said, "and use their quarterback in a different way.
"From week to week, you have a lot of trouble finding corollaries between Chase Daniel and Todd Reesing and Zac Robinson and Colt McCoy and on and on. And the offensive coordinators are very distinctive as well."
Colorado coach Dan Hawkins didn't disagree when asked if some Big 12 teams could be much improved this season and not have it show on their final record.
"I don't think you can assume your record is going to continue to improve when you've got to scratch and claw every week," Hawkins said. "I don't think the Big 12 has to take a back seat to anyone."
