AP

Derrick Washington likes big backs, and he cannot lie.

The Missouri senior running back, a sculpted 6-foot, 220-pound block of granite, enjoys watching a great back do his thing. When Washington sits down to watch football, he wants to see as many running plays as possible.

“I’m probably biased because I’m a running back, but I love seeing a back get at least 20 to 25 carries a game,” he said. “That’s my kind of football.”

Missouri’s Derrick Washington has 27 rushing touchdowns over the past two seasons.
L.G. Patterson / Associated Press

Over the past decade, the Big 12 has fostered a reputation as a league that enjoys flinging the ball. The last three Heisman Trophy winners the conference produced were quarterbacks, and the league was home to college football’s leading aerial engineer, former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, for 10 years.

But Leach is gone. So too are top-flight quarterbacks like Texas’ Colt McCoy and Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford. A galaxy of proven stars at tailback dot Big 12 rosters.

It begs the question — might there be a running game revival afoot?

Maybe, maybe not.

“I think it’s too early to tell,” Texas A&M defensive tackle Lucas Patterson said. “College football is always going to be changing. That’s just a constant of football. It just depends on the team, who you’re playing and the personnel they have at the time.”

This year, Big 12 teams aren’t hurting in their backfield personnel. The league is teeming with talented tailbacks. Missouri’s Washington has 27 rushing touchdowns the past two years. Kansas State’s Daniel Thomas, Iowa State’s Alexander Robinson and Nebraska’s Roy Helu Jr. all surpassed 1,100 yards a year ago.

Texas A&M is blessed with a pair of potential 1,000-yard backs in Christine Michael and Cyrus Gray. Oklahoma’s DeMarco Murray has a skill set that prompts NFL scouts to drool.

Colorado’s Rodney Stewart, Texas Tech’s Baron Batch, Oklahoma State’s Kendall Hunter — all have achieved their share of success at the collegiate level already.

Even Baylor, which averaged just over 52 yards rushing in Big 12 games last year, could see a resurgence in its running attack behind a healthy Jay Finley and dual-threat quarterback Robert Griffin.

Such an abundance of talent breeds competition. Most of the Big 12’s top backs said they check the highlights and scan the box scores to see how their backfield rivals are faring.

“DeMarco Murray, he’s at the top,” said K-State’s Thomas, who led the league with 1,265 rushing yards in 2009. “He’s a great running back. Everybody is looking at him.”

Kudos for Murray

Murray is indeed one of those players who is easy on the eyes. Hampered by injuries and Oklahoma’s makeshift offensive line in 2009, he finished with subdued stats of 705 yards and eight touchdowns. But there is no denying the breathtaking talent of the senior, who tied Adrian Peterson’s freshman touchdown record back in 2007.

“There will be plays where I’m supposed to make a chip block or something, and I get caught up in watching DeMarco,” Oklahoma receiver Ryan Broyles said. “I’m a fan of the game just like everybody else, and he’s fun to watch.”

Even with the Big 12’s abundance of running back talent, offensive coordinators aren’t likely to rewrite the playbook to fit the era of the power-I or the wishbone. The spread offense, with its reliance on short, safe passes, remains in vogue.

New Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville will still run the spread and pass the ball a majority of downs, but the coach said a quality running game is vital to an offense’s success, too.

“Me being a defensive coach, I love lining up against guys who say they’re not going to run,” he said, “because somebody is going to get hit.”

The real trick is finding a healthy balance. Texas A&M quarterback Jerrod Johnson said that the most successful offensive schemes are those that use the running and passing game in tandem, thus keeping a defense off-balance.

“It’s always a seesaw battle between running and throwing, but if you end up somewhere in the middle, you’ll win more games,” Johnson said.

Mack Brown doesn’t need to be taught that lesson. Last year, Brown’s Texas team passed about 65 percent of the time behind the preternaturally accurate McCoy. But that strategy backfired when McCoy succumbed to an injury in the BCS title game against Alabama.

The Longhorns couldn’t exactly reinvent themselves on the fly.

“There’s no question that if we could have run the ball better when Garrett (Gilbert) went in the game, we would have had a better chance to hang in until he got comfortable,” Brown said. “But we didn’t.”

So the Longhorns are tweaking their offense for 2010, with plans to feature more under-center formations and more running plays in general.

That message is undoubtedly music to the ears of the UT tailbacks, as it would be to any ball-hungry back.

It’s still unclear whether this season will be the Year of the Running Back in the Big 12, but you can bet that the league’s top runners are going to plow forward in their quest to make it so.

“There is a lot of talent in the Big 12 at running back, and I’m just happy to be part of that,” Oklahoma’s Murray said. “Hopefully we can all do our thing this year and show that the running game isn’t dead.”

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