Posts Tagged ‘College Football’

Texas and Nebraska: A Cautionary Tale

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Texas-Nebraska is an obvious mismatch.

Going into the Big 12 Championship, one team is a reigning powerhouse with a future Hall of Fame coach not far removed from a National Championship that views the game as a stepping stone for a chance to play a powerful Florida team for another national championship. The other is a former powerhouse, fallen on hard times but on the rebound with a new coach. But everyone agrees the game will be a speedbump on the powerhouse’s way to playing in another National Championship game..

Sound familiar? It should, because it describes not only the 2009 Big 12 Championship, but also the very first Big 12 Championship in 1996. There Nebraska was the reigning powerhouse, far more dominant in the 1990s (three National Championships in the 1990s under Tom Osborne) than Texas, which has just a single National Championship under Mack Brown. (Not that we’re complaining, mind you. We’re very happy to have both it and Mack Brown.) And the Nebraska team UT will be facing Saturday has a better record (9-3) than the Longhorn team going into the 1996 game (7-4). (As an added irony, the Texas win knocked Mack Brown’s North Carolina team out of a BCS bowl.. )

All that said, Texas is still (and should be) the prohibitive favorite. Neither Cody Green nor Zac Lee seems to be as crafty or nervy a quarterback as James Brown was for Texas. And Colt McCoy is probably the best college quarterback in the country right now.

Still, the Longhorns shouldn’t get cocky. If a team coached by John Mackovic can upset a defending National Champion, anything can happen.

Texas 49, Texas A&M 39

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Texas survives a shootout against A&M. Rivalry games are frequently closer than the betting line, but Will Muschamp can’t be pleased with a 6-5 (now 6-6) team lighting up his defense for more than 500 yards. Give the Ags credit: they weren’t given a chance going in, but they made a very close game of it. They have some players, especially Jerrod Johnson at QB. But A&M simply gave Colt McCoy too much time to work his magic, and Marquis Goodwin’s 95-yard kickoff return broke the Aggie’s back.

This was only one game, but Texas can’t expect to win a National Championship with defense like that. They have to do a better job against a more dangerous Nebraska team in the Big XII Championship, and then hope they don’t face another mobile quarterback in the National Championship. (Gee, I wonder who that might be?)

On the other hand, Colt McCoy only had a middling good night for him, and the Horns still put up 49 points.

You’ve got to hand it to the Aggies. They’re a young, aggressive team with some real players among their Freshmen and Sophmores. Next year they could be pretty dangerous, especially with Colt going off to whichever NFL team is smart enough to draft him. (God help him if it’s the Raiders.)

The Big XII South could be very interesting next year…