DALLAS – Baylor is back-to-back Big 12 Champions.
But heading into the 2015 season, the Bears seeking a third-straight
Big 12 crown, Baylor is not the favorite to win the conference.
“Getting chosen second, I mean, that’s okay,” Baylor coach Art Briles said with a chuckle on Tuesday in Dallas. “Like I said, it’s better than getting third. I guess you’ve got to win it three times in a row to get picked first.”
Being the underdog is nothing new for the Bears though.
In 2013, the year of their first Big 12 title, the Bears were picked fifth in the preseason poll, only receiving two first place votes.
The very next year, the Bears were picked a little higher but Bob Stoops’ Oklahoma team was picked to win its ninth Big 12 Championship.
Baylor took home the title in both seasons and still even with two-straight titles, the Bears haven’t earned the recognition.
“We understand how we’ve been able to get to this point, and to get to this point has been through trying hard to earn respect,” Briles said. “Never earning respect, understanding that people don’t know our names.”
Where they have been picked for the third-straight season – not as the favorites – Briles said they will just do it on the field to prove people wrong as many times as it takes.
“So we want to make people know our names by our actions, by our performance on the field,” he said. “So that’s something that will continually stay with us because. Even if you do achieve what you’d like to achieve, there’s always going to be doubters, and doubters are motivators.
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