To those that question the Big 12's strength top to bottom I thought these #'s were worth pointing out.  Sagarin does a conference rating solely based on his rankings and ESPN does a power ranking combining the computer and the AP poll but because it only weights those ranked for the AP (with half of the weight) it skews in favor of the top heavy conference.  A better method is to take the complete BCS rankings (since at the end of the day these are the rankings that really matter and they combine the polls and the computers).  I think the polls have been a little hard on the Big 12, not giving it's teams a break for their seemingly mediocre records considering a brutal round robin with 9 out of 10 teams in the BCS top 43.  

For those that still claim the Big 10 is tough, 90% of the Big 12 (9/10 teams) are ranked above all but 42.6% of the Big 10 (5/12 teams) including Iowa.  So yes if Iowa were in the Big 12 they would have the 10th highest ranking in the Big 12 topping only Kansas.  As for the realignment, the Big 12 has done well we traded the #25 and #30 teams for the #18 and #21 teams... and last year we lost the #100 team and the #19 team.  So all in all the average rank of teams leaving or left the Big 12 is 43.5 (below the big 12 average) and the ranking of those entering is 19.5 (above the Big 12 average).  Considering there is talk that the Big 12 won't get two teams in the BCS bowls and the Big 10 may get two, I think a little more outcry is in order.