I’m off this week until the start of practice, but I pre-programmed some posts and some discussion topics to get us through the days — and I’m not mailing it in, honest. We’ll do more than one a day and I’m close enough to my base that I’d see a bat signal.

Still, I thought it was appropriate to gear down and then begin with this talking point.

Just about everyone is running tempo offense, either as a main device or as a changeup, and even Texas has decided to join the parade in the Big 12. Yet we know college football and we know that offenses learn a new trick and then the defense gets pantsed for a while before it figures out how to shame the offense.

Back and forth it goes, with one taking a lead and the other falling behind, narrowing the gap and then taking a lead of its own.

Since we haven’t had to obsess over expansion or television contracts or the like this summer, we’ve instead taken deliberate looks at tempo offense and debated the pros and cons and wondered whether it might, you know, hurt players even as the game moves boldly toward a safer game.

What I hadn’t heard or even figured out is if this is a trend that’s going to lap the defense until a wily coordinator slingshots into the lead or if this is a thing unlike its predecessors. Normally, I’d lean toward the former, but because tempo is so unique in that it relies almost solely on its own variables, I trended toward the latter.

And then I went to the Big 12 media days and came to understand a defense can try to compromise tempo with schemes, but that coaches are resigned to this reality: Tempo is here to stay.

“You play well, tackle well, line up,” Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops said. “Is there any way? Not really. You have to be as efficient as they are. So if they’re able to get to the line, get their call and get ready to play, whatever pace that may be, you’ve got to be efficient enough defensively to have your call in order, to have it relayed and to be down in position to play.

“As much as anything to counter it, you’ve got to be as prepared to play on the snap with the tempo as they have to be. From there, it’s who’s going to make the play?”