olympicoscar
Life is what you've made of it.
Too many recruiting restrictions in the Big 12 that punish the northern schools.
For instance when the conference was formed, tejas immediately proposed limitations for the time that coaches could be 'out of the office" on the recruiting trail. Obviously that would not hurt the donghorns at all as the their coaches really don't need to leave the office at all to recruit. Schools like Oklahoma and Okie Jr are just 3 hours drive from Dallas. The other Big 12 south schools resided in tejas. At the time the Big 12 north division was better than the south. Nebraska, Colorado Kansas St, Missouri, were the dominant teams. A couple years after those recruiting restrictions went into place the Big 12 north schools collapsed.
Like everything tejas, they underachieve like no other. They can only do well when everybody else's standards are limited.
The Big 10 has more lax recruiting standards due to their teams being north. Nebraska is not only in a better place economically, they are in a better place for recruiting nationally.
I don't think they can make inroads against the East teams. The University is just not as exciting when they play football as they were in the 1990's and earlier.