Things Dana Holgorsen loves:
1) Red Bull
2) Touchdown passes
3) Subtly ridiculing Baylor's non-conference schedule pic.twitter.com/hePXZGeyRG

— Mike Casazza (@mikecasazza) September 19, 2016

A rite of passage as the Big 12 enters conference plan.

Baylor, if you’re interested, has outscored Northwestern State, SMU and Rice 133-30 and has the 97th-most difficult schedule in the country so far. Holgorsen’s team is 40 spots higher, and that will rise with Saturday’s game against BYU.

The Bears haven’t played a non-conference game against a team that was in the ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 or SEC — or the Big East, which existed in 2011 — at that time since 2009. Baylor won at Wake Forest and lost at home to UConn that season. There was a series it split with TCU in 2010-11, but TCU was still in a Group of 5 conference. The Bears deserve some credit for that, but that was also a long time ago.

Whether you start countin in 2010 or 2012, the streak comes to an end with a game at Duke next season, and it gets a little better after that.