DALLAS -- Dana Holgorsen is not a lawyer, but the energy drink-chugging West Virginia head coach delivered one heck of an unofficial closing argument on behalf of the Big 12's up-tempo offenses at the conference's media days Tuesday morning.
Asked about the safety concerns raised by Nick Saban of Alabama and Bret Bielema of Arkansas last week at SEC media days, Holgorsen responded that they should "get over it because it's not going to change.
"It's going into the NFL, for crying out loud," Holgorsen added. "Don't see it changing any time soon. So you'd better learn to adapt to it."
As the conference that started a pronounced trend toward no-huddle offenses, with more than half of its teams running it in some form, Big 12 coaches and players have not been shy about defending their identity.
Texas head coach Mack Brown said earlier in the day that his team would be returning to an up-tempo offense in part to help the Longhorns defense perform better in conference play.
"We felt like it was a real disadvantage to our defense that they didn't get to see tempo at any time during practice," Brown said. "They handled it much better this spring because they saw it every day. We feel like going to the up-tempo offense will probably be a bigger help to our defense than it will our offense."
Texas averaged 69 offensive snaps per game last season, Brown said. He would like that tally to be over 80 in 2013.
Follow Dan Greenspan on Twitter @DanGreenspan.
