MORGANTOWN — When anyone thinks of the Big 12 as the 2012 season begins, his thoughts immediately go to a conference blessed with quarterbacks.

No fewer than five quarterbacks are on the Davey O’Brien watch list, and the general feeling around the country is that if Geno Smith of West Virginia University doesn’t win that award, Landry Jones of Oklahoma will.

The Big 12, of course, has always been a quarterback league, the award for the top QB being named for O’Brien, who once was quarterback at TCU, and you look back throughout history and see any number of great quarterbacks that played for teams currently part of the modern Big 12.

But with all that having been said, it seems almost insane that while half the league’s starting quarterbacks are considered contenders for the O’Brien Award, none of them wear the Texas Longhorns’ uniform.

In fact, in this league that almost certainly will be won with a wing and a prayer, Texas is operating without so much as even knowing who will be the starting quarterback going into camp next week. It was such a point of contention at media day in Dallas that it became something of a joke as coach Mack Brown led a group of cheerleaders onto the podium with him, only to have the veteran writer Barry Tramel of the Oklahoman ask the following question:

Q. I’d like to ask the cheerleaders who they want to quarterback the Longhorns this year.

Coach Brown: They would want the worst one. I think that would be without question. There aren’t any Longhorn cheerleaders in that group there.

This, of course, was all in good fun, at least as much good fun as there can be when an Oklahoma writer asks a Texas coach about an unsettled situation in his lineup.

As camp opens it would appear that David Ash has a slight edge over Case McCoy, but Brown understands just how fluid the situation is as he tries to regain his team’s place at or near the top of the conference after an 8-5 season.

“Last year at this time I sat here and we had four (quarterbacks),” he recalled. “And there was a lot of concern about trying to get four guys prepared for a new offense.”

One of the four was Garrett Gilbert, who would transfer to SMU after the season.

“So at the same time Gilbert gets hurt in the second ballgame, David Ash steps up as a true freshman, Case McCoy jumps in, and Connor Wood and Wood transfers, so it was all over the place,” Brown explained.

“What we have done now, we have two older guys that have been through a year with (assistants) Bryan Harsin and Major Applewhite offense. They both won significant games, Case against A&M in College Station at the end of the year and David Ash in the bowl game against Cal. So we’re coming in at a much better place this year than we were last year.”

That gives hopes, not guarantees, a coach in a high-powered conference likes sure things at quarterback.

Brown knows all about that.

“If you sit there and you say

we’d rather have Vince Young, we’d rather have Colt McCoy, there’s no question. Those are two of the best quarterbacks to ever play college football. You’d like to have that luxury,” Brown said.

In fact, he once did have that luxury.

Young, one might recall, was good enough to lead the Longhorns to a national championship in the 2006 Rose Bowl game, running for 200 yards and passing for 267 yards in 41-38 victory over USC.

McCoy did not quite have such good fortune, which indicates to Brown that even when you have a quarterback of that magnitude there are no real guarantees.

“Even then, if they get hurt like Colt did in the national championship game, you’re usually inexperienced in the backup role,” he said.

In a way, he is preaching to the choir here in West Virginia, where Major Harris led the Mountaineers into the championship game after the 1988 season against Notre Dame at the Fiesta Bowl, only to injure his throwing shoulder, forcing coach Don Nehlen to scrap a game plan he was certain would win.

Brown is hoping one man will step forward and claim the spot.

“Two is more difficult if the chemistry isn’t working well,” he admitted.

However, to date, it hasn’t proved to be a problem.

“They left spring practice even. In talking to the guys last night, they’ve had a very competitive summer, and both of them are in the mix and we should have a great battle at that position in preseason,” Brown said.

“Right now David and Case (who is Colt McCoy’s younger brother) are getting along really well. They’re worried more from what I hear about winning than they are about playing, and I feel like that one of those guys will separate himself some in preseason and it will give us the other guy to come off the bench and play if need be.”

Either way, with Texas possessing what is considered by far the best defense in the conference and one of the nation’s best, it is possible that they will not need the kind of production at quarterback that Smith will give WVU or Jones will give Oklahoma.

Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com. Follow on Twitter @bhertzel.