Picking the 2009 Pre-Season All-Big 12 Team - Nebraska Nominations

by Jon Johnston on Jul 22, 2009 6:00 AM CDT in Nebraska Husker Football

We're still over a month away from the start of football season, but Big 12 media days will start in a week - so it's time for us to start preparing for pre-season prognostication.

The Big 12 group here at SB Nation is working together to pick a pre-season All-Big 12 team. The first part of the process required that we nominate players who we'd like other Big 12 SB Nation bloggers to consider for selection.

The key here is nominating players that you realistically expect to be considered as the best at their position this coming season. It'd be wishful thinking, for example, to expect that Zac Lee stood a chance of being selected as part of a pre-season All Big 12 team over Sam Bradford or Colt McCoy (or just about any other returning starter for that matter).

Click the jump for a discussion about the Nebraska players we've nominated and the 2009 All-Big 12 preseason team.

Here's the list of players we chose to nominate for Nebraska:

RB Roy Helu
TE Mike McNeill
OL Jacob Hickman
OL Mike Smith
DT Ndamukong Suh
DE Pierre Allen
DE Barry Turner
S Larry Asante
K Alex Henery

I'm guessing it's roughly the same list that the Nebraska media guys will be contemplating in another week. The key is - how many of our Huskers can be expected to be named to the 2009 All-Big 12 Preseason teams?

Is Roy Helu a solid selection when compared to Missouri's Derrick Washington, OSU's Kendall Hunter or Oklahoma's Chris Brown or DeMarco Murray? It's a possibility - Helu was an honorable mention at the end of last season. Brown ended up with more yardage at the end of the season, but voters might favor selecting two different teams - Nebraska and Oklahoma - rather than two backs from the same team.

Based on his 2008 performance, Mike McNeill has to be considered one of the best tight ends in the conference, although Oklahoma's Jermaine Gresham was first team last season and probably the best tight end in the nation - so it's doubtful McNeill will be selected over him.

I'll skip the offensive linemen for now - we'll examine them in more detail in a later post.

Suh is a pretty obvious selection for first-team as a defensive tackle, along with Gerald McCoy of Oklahoma.

Husker fans have to be happy with the return of Barry Turner and the emergence of Pierre Allen, but Oklahoma's Jeremy Beal and Austin English are both phenomenal with Beal returning after garnering second-team honors last season. Texas' Sergio Kindle moves to defensive end this season - Kindle was first-team at linebacker last year.

Larry Asante was honorable mention last season, and has a decent chance at getting selected this season, although Baylor's Jordan Lake and Kansas' Darrell Stuckey will most likely take first team.

Alex Henery is going to battle it out with Texas' Hunter Lawrence to see who gets first team, and who gets second.

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Differences in philosophy

Felt like I should come over here and start up a discussion since Husker Mike is coming after us on Twitter about our nominees.

Like I’ve said, it was merely a difference in nomination philosophy. At a lot of positions, I took players who were Missouri’s most legitimate shot at an all-conference nod. Is Jaron Baston going to unseat Suh or McCoy for a DT spot? I don’t think even the most optimistic of Missouri fans would say he would or he could, but he deserves to be in the conversation as MU’s best DT.

I think we see eye-to-eye here (or at least somewhere in the vicinity) on the talent levels, it’s just a divergence of how I went about the nomination process.

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by RPT on Jul 22, 2009 1:36 PM CDT reply actions

Many of your nominees are worthy...

…heck, Sean Weatherspoon had better be a unanimous pick for all-conference.

But you also threw names into the mix that had absolutely no business being in the conversation.

Here are the total number of nominees:

Texas 18 (BON did not participate in the nominations, so the Ralphie Report submitted their names)
Mizzou 17
Oklahoma 13
Kansas 11
Oklahoma State 10
Texas Tech 9
Nebraska 9

Hey, if you really thought you needed to submit a candidate for every position, why didn’t you nominate a place kicker? You did nominate a punter; are the Tigers going for two after every touchdown this season?

The nominating process was pretty clear: send us 10 – 15 players from your college squad (i.e. CN will send us Nebraska guys only) or as many guys you believe have a LEGITIMATE shot at making the all-conference team in 2009.

You sent 17, including several players who had never started a game in college. It’s one thing to be a homer…but to suggest that Missouri has more candidates than Oklahoma (and almost as many as Texas) is, well, laughable.

by Husker Mike on Jul 22, 2009 9:30 PM CDT up reply actions

You know, honestly...

In hindsight, I would have done it differently. Don’t get our back and forth confused – you certainly have a point.

There’s an easy way to remedy all this: Don’t vote for the ones that don’t deserve to be there.

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by RPT on Jul 23, 2009 12:37 AM CDT up reply actions

Problem is...

…that the rest of us have to research even more players to see if there is something we missed or overlooked. Or…when we hit a Tiger we wouldn’t normally have thought of as a candidate, we just dismiss them because they’re probably on the list because either (a) Rock-M can’t read or (b) Rock-M has grandiose opinions of their players.

And it makes for a easy opportunity to ridicule you guys in the middle of July. :-)

by Husker Mike on Jul 23, 2009 6:52 AM CDT up reply actions