/cdn.vox-cdn.com/assets/724352/125471852.jpg)
Three Big 12 football teams - Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas A&M - are ranked in the top eight nationally in both the USA Today and AP weekly college polls.
Oklahoma, of course, is the nation's top-ranked team at this time, and their in-state rival Oklahoma State and A&M are either six and seven or seven and eight, depending of which major poll you follow. The significance of this is the Big 12, warts and all, is the only conference to have three teams in the top eight.
Unfortunately, this accolade will be short lived as a result of the huge matchup this weekend pitting Oklahoma State and the Aggies of A&M at what is certain to be a bloodbath at Kyle Field in College Station. The game will feature the country's second-best offense in Oklahoma State going against the third best defense in the Big 12. This is the first time since 1975 that a game with two top-ten teams has been played at Texas A&M and only the third time ever.
Cowboys' quarterback Brandon Weeden leads the Big 12 in both total offense and passing yardage, averaging 384 yards a game through the air. Oklahoma State is also getting it done on the ground so far this year, with sophomore running back Joseph Randle averaging 126 yards a game, second best in the conference. Texas A&M has a pretty fair ground burner of its own in senior Cyrus Gray, who is immediately behind Randle in the league rushing category, with a 116-yards-a-game average.
Sticking with the number 8, that is the number of Big 12 schools that remain undefeaten after three weeks. Only Missouri and Kansas have endured losses as we enter college football's fourth week.
Here are some other numbers of significance in Big 12 football entering Week 3 of the 2011 season:
0 - Baylor's 48-0 whitewashing of Stephen F. Austin last Saturday was the Bears' first shutout in football since 1995.
9 - Iowa State has come from behind in the fourth quarter in winning all three of its games. The scoring margin of the three games is a combined nine points.
10 - Third-down conversion rate of Texas' three opponents this season in the second half.
40 - Number of completed passes by Texas Tech quarterback Seth Doege out of 44 attempts (90.1 percent), an NCAA record for completion percentage, in the Red Raiders win over New Mexico.
57 - Oklahoma State wide-receiver Justin Blackmon had just 57 receiving yards. against Tulsa. That snapped a string of 14 consecutive games in which the junior All-American had exceeded the century mark in receiving yards.
71 - The number of players who saw action in Missouri's 69-0 rout of Western Illinois last week.
89 - Oklahoma's winning percentage (75-9) when playing as the country's top-ranked team.
101 - Weeks Oklahoma has been ranked No, 1 in the Associated Press media poll, the most of any Division I-A team.
385 - Total elapsed time in minutes (6 hours, 25 minutes) from the scheduled start of the game between Oklahoma State and Tulsa and the end of the game. The game did not start until after midnight because of severe weather in the Tulsa area.
799 - The 768 yards of total offense run up by Georgia Tech over Kansas in Week 3 was not the highest total in Kansas history. Nebraska had 799 yards of offense against the Jayhawks in 1978.