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Sunday, November 07, 2004

Longhorns: Simply Amazing 

I've attended many Texas games over the years, and what I saw transpire on Saturday night was a first. Texas trailed late in the second quarter, by a bunch, and I began to get visions of several meltdown Longhorn losses from the not-to-distant past.

In 1997, Texas was humiliated at home by unranked UCLA, 66-3, and in both 2000 and 2003, rival OU mauled the Horns, 63-14 and 65-13, respectively. All of those games were over before the halftime gun sounded, and with a 35-7 lead, it looked like Oklahoma State might follow suit.

Despite the seemingly insurmountable deficit, though, part of me thought "we can still win this game." I slightly inebriated heart shouted down a more level head, and somehow I remained optomistic. Forty-nine unanswered points later my friends and I were toasting a 56-35 win, the biggest comeback in Texas football history.

In more than 100 years of Longhorn football, no Texas team had ever erased more than a 19-point hole. Thus, "Amazing" doesn't even begin to describe how improbable a feat it is to storm back from twenty-eight down. For almost thirty minutes, the Horns could do no right. Then for the rest of the game they could nothing but right.

Texas scored on nine straight possessions, and QB Vince Young completed every single pass that he threw in the game's final two quarters. RB Cedric Benson found the end zone five times, and he extended his NCAA-leading rushing total beyond the 1400-yard mark. To top it off, the Texas defense that looked awful early held OSU to fewer yards in the third quarter than they has scored points in the first half.

For thirty minutes on Saturday, Texas fans saw complete domination from their team. OSU is no slouch, and the Horns lined up and ran roughshod over them. It was a statement game that proclaims Texas as a legitimate elite team in college football.

There's no way to know yet if the Horns will earn an at-large bid to one of the BCS Bowls, but if they continue to play the way did last night, the only thing that will stop them is a pity decision to give one of said bids to Utah. Kansas and Texas A&M should go ahead and resign themselves to the fact that they don't stand a chance against the Horns in the coming weeks.

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