The big 12 is fine. Look at all of the conferences and you will find the level of competition from top to bottom is the same. There are good teams and shitty teams in every conference. One thing everyone is forgetting in regards to the SEC is their scheduling. They only play 9 conference games with 4 pussy OOC games littered through out their schedule. Over the years this has helped them become what they are. Win those easy games and you and everyone(mostly) in the conference is 4-0. Well this gives teams a bump in the early season rankings. And because majority of them are now ranked from beating shitty teams, when they play each other-they won/lost against a ranked opponent. Thus, they don't fall far in the rankings. And because of the OOC games littered throughout, they can redeem some of the ranking that was lost by beating a shitty team while hoping a better ranked team loses. Apply this to the majority of the conference and basically all you are doing is trading spots through out the season while keeping each other ranked. They have had some bad ass teams, no doubt. But in regards to the conference being badass or superior to the other conferences! Not so much. Its merely stat padding each other.
Now I am not going to lie, the dirty south has a ton of talent and that talent usually stays home or close by. And my perception to that is mostly because of family financial situations so there is that. Our great state has an ton of talent also. But recruits are persuaded by coaching pedigree, success, facilities, and atmosphere. This is why we was good! Because we had all of that. But we got complacent in just about everything and well now here we are. Everything snowballed because we got complacent which took us out of the picture. This had a huge impact on our conference perception because BlowU was left holding the bag. Well Texas sucks and the rest of the teams in Texas sucks(no bluebloods), and I want to win trophies...fuck it! So recruits go somewhere else.
One thing I do have to state which has hurt this conference is the spread offense. Reason being is because of the lack of defense and that the qbs doesn't read defenses. This doesn't bode well for development. And this shits on their NFL chances, if they get any at all.
Once we get back to where we were, things will start change. Conference strength perception is just like team perception. It comes and goes in cycles. So we are fine. It will come. But for the love of god..get 2 more teams so we don't have to do the stupid rematch in the conference championship crap!