Longhorn Football

You knew it was coming. Perhaps you've even pined for it, yearning for my take on that fateful autumn night two weeks ago in Lubbock, Texas.

I'm not going to go into the whole 4th game in a row against a Top 11 team or trying to get up emotionally for the 4th game in a row. I'll just talk exes and ohs.

If you were to tell me that we'd go into Lubbock after that gauntlet and hold Tech to just 30 offensive points, I would've bet the house! And the car. And what's left of my 401K. That is if I was allowed to gamble.

1. This is the biggest game in the history of your opponent's athletic department, not just football. Students had camped out starting on Tuesday for tickets. You know it's going to be loud.
2. You are pinned on your own 2-yard line with said home crowd roaring at military afterburner levels (props to TMQ).
3. Yes, you average better than 4 yards per carry, but you average 12 yards per reception--your bread and butter--and you've almost double passing yards versus rushing yards. If you're as intelligent as a cucumber, you decide a quick slant or at the very least an option to the wide side of the field. Apparently, if you're Greg !%*&^ Davis, you call a slow-developing run into the teeth of a defense just itching to give their crowd one more reason to ratchet up the noise. If A=B and B=C, then Greg Davis is less intelligent than a cucumber.
4. It took 3.5 quarters to figure out what to do on offense after losing Quan Cosby to injury.
5. That pick-six that Colt threw to Charbonnet has been itching to happen for several weeks now. You've seen the Brett Favre coming out where Colt forgets to just throw the ball away. But give credit for Ruffin McNeal having his defense prepared and a few wrinkles to throw McCoy off his game.
6. Tech dominated, flat dominated, the line of scrimmage for 55 minutes of that game.
7. With UT driving for the game-winning touchdown, a smart player falls down at the 1-inch line to take some more time off the clock. If you're the #1 team in the nation and you can't gain 1 inch in two attempts, you don't deserve to be #1.
8. Everybody talks about Blake Gideon's dropped INT, but nobody talks about Earl Thomas taking himself out of the final play. If you watch the replay (by the way, you couldn't miss it because it was all over ESPN.com), you'll see that Thomas (#12) runs slick smooth past Crabtree and onto the sideline. You're a safety. Your job is to hit people and hit people hard. Crabtree's momma should still be feeling that hit. Why didn't you hit anybody? Take a page from the Rodney Harrison playbook and do everything but commit a felony to prevent him from either catching the ball, landing in bounds or making any progress toward the goal-line or sideline.

So our only chance to make the Big XII title game and National Championship game rest on OU and Baylor's porous defenses to shut down The Fighting Mike Leaches? Good luck with that. By the way, this is the best use of the "The Fighting Coaches Name Plural" of any I've seen. The Jeff Tedfords, et cetera just don't have the catchet of the Leaches. Sounds like a CFL summer league team name.

Congrats to Tech on a whale of a game and a downright demolition of the OSU Pokes. See you in Miami.

Finally, it's odd that I am able to have perspective on this sort of thing. But when my preseason expectation was four losses, three at best, I'm excited to see what next year holds. Now if we can just not play down to A&M in a few weeks.