It has everything to do with Texas and nothing to do with the rest of the Big 12. Maybe if Texas was a middle of the pack Big 12 team last year, but they weren’t. They easily won the Big 12 and only lost once (to Oklahoma, also an SEC team).

But just because the best team in the Big 12 leaves doesn’t mean the new best team is the same quality as the team that left.

Same goes with Oregon in the B1G. Oregon and Washington were the two clear top teams in the PAC last year. Oregon crushed every PAC team last year, except for Washington (who they lost to twice). Washington only lost to Michigan in the natty.

Washington graduated almost everyone and lost their coach, so they’ve struggled this year. Oregon rolled through the B1G almost as easily as they did in the PAC. From this, we can see that the top teams in the PAC were comparable with the top teams in the B1G.

But again, if you take the top 2 teams out of the PAC, the next best teams don’t automatically become as good as those that left.

SMU rolled the AAC. Now they’ve gone undefeated in the ACC, but haven’t played the top teams yet. It’ll be interesting to see how they do against Clemson.

Ironically, the only conference your argument makes sense with is the Big 12. Arizona State was a bad to mid PAC team, but they immediately jumped up to the top of the Big 12. So I agree that we can logically argue that the PAC and Big 12 are similar.

Here’s a dumb example to highlight my point. Say there’s a 6’11” guy in a room full of 5’6” guys and one 5’7” guys. The 6’11” guy goes into a different room with a bunch of 6’9” and 6’10” guys. The 6’11” guy is the tallest in a room full of tall guys. But that doesn’t mean the 5’7” guy in the first room is now tall. It just means he’s the tallest guy in a room full of short guys.