Plenty has been made of all the offenses in the Big 12 and the big passing numbers put up last season by Sam Bradford, Colt McCoy, Graham Harrell and Chase Daniel.

But a lot of talk today at the Big 12 media day has revolved around running the football and how that is getting overlooked in the conference.

“If you’re going to pass, you have to run first,” Texas A&M coach Mike Sherman said. “It all comes back to running the ball and controlling the game.I know a lot of people in this conference that throw the ball, but it was the running game that really got me.”

Said Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy: “You know the saying, ‘you do what’s important to you,” well that’s the way we feel about the run. It’s important to us and we’re going to start there.”

Of course, Gundy has Kendall Hunter to hand the ball off to.

From Nebraska coach Bo Pelini: “If you look at Oklahoma after the Texas game, they were very balanced. DeMarco Murray is a good back. They controlled it at times vs. Florida in the title game. When Missouri had it going a couple of years ago, they were running it.”

More Pelini: “You can talk about throwing the football all you want. If you want to win championships, at some point you have to be physical enough to run the football. I think everybody talks about all the yards that (Sam) Bradford put up last year. Let me tell you, Oklahoma was able to run the football and that’s what made them team that were were.”