Dallas ? A couple of days after his team lost, 77-0, at Oklahoma, Texas A&M coach Dennis Franchione was philosophical about the lopsided loss.

“You coach long enough, you can be on both sides of those things,” Franchione said.

In his case, “long enough” was four weeks. That’s the amount of time between Texas A&M’s 73-10 victory over Baylor and the 77-point rout at Oklahoma.

Routs seem to be more commonplace in the Big 12 Conference, and it’s not just Oklahoma that can make a good team look helpless, although the Sooners seem to have perfected the art.

Now, it’s Baylor’s turn to face Oklahoma. If the Bears are 63 points worse than Texas A&M, and the Aggies are 77 points worse than Oklahoma, does that make Baylor a 140-point underdog to Oklahoma today?

According to the oddsmakers, Baylor is merely a 53-point underdog to the Sooners. The way scores are exploding across the Big 12, you wonder who in their right mind would put money on Baylor? But people will.

“When you get to 50, it’s like a magic number,” oddsmaker Keith Glantz explained. “It’s half a hundred, and that’s kind of outrageous.”

Glantz has been following point spreads for nearly 40 years and says he never has seen a 60-point spread. Two years ago, Florida was favored by 56 over Louisiana-Monroe and failed to cover. Miami also failed to cover a couple of 50-point spreads in recent years.

“If anyone has a chance, it’s this team,” Glantz said, referring to the Sooners, who are winning games by an average of 35 points.

Baylor has company on the short end of lopsided scores. Texas was handed a 65-13 spanking, courtesy of OU. Oklahoma State has been beaten, 52-9 and 55-16, the last two weeks. High-scoring Texas Tech had the tables turned by Missouri in a 62-31 loss.

The first instinct is to blame it on better athletes and better offenses.

“The guys that take the field, particularly in the Big 12 Conference, have the opportunity to score and score readily,” Oklahoma State coach Les Miles said.

Sometimes coaches can’t stop their teams from scoring, such as when Missouri quarterback Brad Smith scored with less than two minutes left against Tech.

“We had a play that I thought would get a three-yard gain and the game would be over,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said. “Brad Smith broke it all the way.”

Then again, when playing a team like Texas Tech, a team never can have enough points. And seeing how quickly teams can score through the air can give false hope to a team that’s fallen behind.

“You see coaches trying to get back into games when the momentum turns and that usually makes the score bigger,” Texas coach Mack Brown said. “Used to, if a game was out of hand, you would just run the ball, be quiet and get the game over.”

When an opponent knows you’re throwing, the odds of interceptions and sacks increase. There are also more three-and-out possessions that put a tired defense back on the field with barely any time off the clock.

Then again, maybe today’s players give up more easily. Games are hyped more than ever, especially with the boom in talk radio and the Internet.

“Sometimes bad things happen, and kids lose their mental edge, and they don’t continue to focus on the game,” Kansas coach Mark Mangino said. “They feel like they’ve got the weight of the world on them.”

The Texas-Oklahoma State game was billed as a battle for the Fiesta Bowl. It wound up being a 39-point rout.

“There’s more pressure on kids than at any other time in college football,” Texas’ Brown said, “because one game means so much.”

The coaches seem to handle the blowouts better than the players.

“We’re all in the same conference competing for the same recruits,” Stoops said. “We’re all big boys.”