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Coaching legend Barry Switzer explains why Big 12 had fewer defensive draft picks than Alabama
By Adam Spencer
Published:
The Big 12 is in a downswing as no team from the conference made an appearance in the College Football Playoff in 2016.
Those struggles carried over to last weekend’s NFL Draft, where only six Big 12 defenders were chosen in the entire seven-round event.
Alabama, on the other hand, had seven defenders selected, showing why the Crimson Tide have been one of the nation’s most dominant teams in recent years.
That led to longtime Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer, who won three national championships at the helm of the Sooners (and who also coached the Dallas Cowboys to a Super Bowl XXX win) to tell radio host Bo Mattingly that the Big 12 simply doesn’t land as many of the nation’s top high school players as it used to (via AL.com):
“They don’t recruit very well,” Switzer told SportsTalk with Bo Mattingly on Tuesday. “Take an Iowa State, Kansas, they don’t get the blue-chip players. Someone said Alabama versus the Big 12, they had more NFL draft choices (in the first three rounds). No, they recruited them. It’s the talent you recruit. They don’t get the talent that Alabama gets. If they had them, they’d have been high draft choices.
“Not saying the Alabama coaches aren’t good — damn right they’re good — but they get to coach good players. You just don’t recruit the good players at schools in the Big 12. The only schools that really do are Texas, which is down, and Oklahoma — they beat the teams they’re supposed to beat but haven’t beaten the ones as good as they are. That’s the difference.”
Switzer’s comments about his old conference are harsh, but it’s hard to say he’s wrong based on the most recent draft results.
Alabama is sure to have several top picks in the 2018 draft, too, so the Big 12 will need to start landing some better athletes if it wants to keep pace with the juggernaut Nick Saban is building in the SEC.
Adam is a daily fantasy sports (DFS) and sports betting expert. A 2012 graduate of the University of Missouri, Adam now covers all 16 SEC football teams. He is the director of DFS, evergreen and newsletter content across all Saturday Football brands.
