Everything Runs Through Austin

A stream of consciousness before the Longhorns final chance at a Big 12 Championship.

I lived in a small town in East Texas for a year when my wife and I got married. I met a lot of great folks, but I also encountered people who knew how to overstay their welcome. I'm thinking specifically of a friend who would drop by unannounced and pull the "oh hey, I was just running a quick errand in the area; I can't stay, just saying hi" move. Next thing you knew, his feet were up on the coffee table, he had gotten a beer from the fridge, and an hour had passed. He'd then say he needed to get going, but if you timed how long it took him from the initial goodbye to when his car was driving away, it was usually about an hour. The move to the SEC has felt like one of his visits. I'm not sure who is who or if the comparison really works, but it feels like the timeline from when Texas and Oklahoma announced their exit from the conference in the summer of 2021 to now, playing in the final Big 12 Championship on Saturday, has been stretched out over an eternity.

Watching how Texas football has grown during that timeframe reminds me of my four-year-old son during the same span. I can't believe how they've both grown. He's gone from diapers, sleeping in a crib, and chattering about Snuffy in Sesame Street to dressing himself now—usually in knight attire because you need to stay ready for war. He wants to watch highlights of Earl Campbell and then act them out with me as the helpless defenders while he plays the Tyler Rose. He also asks me existential questions like, "Why did God make fire ants?" Is watching your children grow really all that different from watching your favorite team go from losing to a terrible Kansas team and finishing 5-7 to beating Alabama on the road and then going scorched Earth on their conference mates as they leave?

After Tech, Jahdae Barron filmed a portion of Sark's postgame speech that probably wasn't meant for public consumption. Before the dance party ensued, Sark broke the team out with a rallying cry of "Fuck around and find out on three, 1-2-3, FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT." Isn't that the same mantra Texas has had for the past 13 years? It just means something completely different now than it did in 2010.

Before Chris Del Conte, Jay Hartzell, and Kevin Eltife, it meant Texas was going to be complacent, stick up our noses, and hope that because of our simple existence, we'd be blessed and highly favored. We messed around, found out how far behind we were, not just to Alabama and Ohio State but Baylor and TCU. No conference championships in 13 years. But with alignment at the top and the right coach with the right players and process, nights like Friday night happen. Opponents find out that Texas isn't so fun to make fun of anymore.

Speaking of mantras, “Everything runs through Lubbock?” I hope Joey McGuire finds a herd of cattle to go with the big hat he's wearing. Man, it felt good to give Tech a country ass-whipping as we said goodbye and watch Texas fully lean into the pettiness that they've avoided for so long. Texas isn't above being petty; they should be the best at it, especially when they've taken punches for years from the rest of the Big 12.

We're finally here, the culmination of the announcement three seasons ago. If Texas beats Mike Gundy and Oklahoma State, they will have defeated every member of the Hateful Eight (the Big 12 members UT/OU divorced) the final time they played them and will have an eternal scoreboard over all of them.

My wife and I have been watching For All Mankind, an alternate history show about what would have happened if the Russians had won the Space Race instead of the US by putting the first man on the moon. It posits that the defeat would have tasted so bitter in the Americans' mouths that the race for space would have continued for decades, with each superpower continually trying to one-up the other.

In the pilot, the Moon becomes Red, and the American astronauts receive an ass-chewing before racing to their favorite watering hole as the song "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" plays:

As I walk this land with broken dreams, I have visions of many things. But happiness is just an illusion. Filled with sadness and confusion. What becomes of the broken-hearted? Who had love that's now departed? I know I've got to find some kind of peace of mind. Maybe.

The song and scene reminded me of the Big 12 brethren that Texas leaves behind. Will the Sooners and Longhorns exit from the Big 12 be the end of their collective motivations? Was the Big 12 always the conference of innovation because it had to be for the smaller schools to compete with their big bad overlords? Now if donors won't implore their coaches to “just win this one game this year, just beat Texas,” is that like the moon vanishing from the sky? Will they trek on?

I’ll miss Mike Gundy, consummate innovator, and the type of coach that he represents from the Big 12. There won’t be any Gundys where we’re going. The non-Nick Saban, Kirby Smart and Urban Meyer coaches in the SEC are essentially salesman crossed with megachurch pastors crossed with guys who show up at your deer lease for a weekend who are good hangs on Friday night and by Saturday you want them to leave.

But Mike Gundy is the quintessential Big 12 coach that’s a cross between a mad scientist and a professional wrestler and an eccentric character you meet in the great American novel, maybe from the mind of Steinbeck or Irving. While the job of most SEC coaches is to recruit and then not waste the materials they have on hand, Big 12 coaches like Gundy have been tasked with being scavengers of scraps who, like Michelangelo, have to find David calling out to them from the marble. It’s hard to lay the smackdown on a Matt Campbell, Chris Kleiman, Mike Leach, *** ****** or a Bill Snyder. Middle Class SEC coaches bring a gun to gun fight that they don’t know how to use and then they shoot themselves in the crotch. Big 12 coaches like Gundy bring nunchaku to a gun fight, but they’ve mastered that weapon more than you’ve practiced yours, so they end up breaking your nose before you can unholster your firearm.

Against the Cowboys, Texas will be able to exploit a lot of the same matchup advantages that the Longhorns exploited over Texas Tech: our defensive front against a stationary quarterback, our athletic secondary against their slow wide receivers, etc. But it’s still Mike Gundy, the wizard of second-half adjustments who has beaten Steve Sarkisian two years in a row with second-half double digit comebacks. I’ll have a bottle of champagne nearby, but it won’t be too close, not until the burnt orange and white confetti falls on Jerry’s field and Yormark’s face goes white as a ghost.

I watched Florida make stupid mistake after stupid mistake against the Seminoles on Saturday night, and I thought to myself, “Sark is going to wipe the floor with a lot of these dumbass SEC teams next year.” Give me an opponent that’s full of undeveloped four and five stars who aren’t coached well over a Mike Gundy team any day.

I’ve made several really good friends from Georgia in Austin; they won’t like the SEC slander I just laid out. Why should I respect the SEC when the College Football Playoff committee isn’t respecting my school's double-digit win in Tuscaloosa? I don’t understand why Oregon is getting more credit for blowing out a Colorado team that finished 4-8 but the media convinced themselves was good at the time than the Longhorns are getting for a 10-point win over Saban, a 10-point win over Iowa State on the road, and ranked victories over Kansas and Kansas State.

https://x.com/NashTalksTexas/status/1729658760480604264?s=20

We lost to our rival—trust me, I remember, I think about it every day. But Oregon lost to theirs too. Oh, I forgot about Bo Nix’s 78% completion percentage and how that’s more impressive than Texas winning 2.25 conference games without their starting quarterback.

I’m furious because I didn’t let myself care about the playoff all year; I just wanted to watch Steve Sarkisian and Quinn Ewers lift the Big 12 Championship Trophy in front of Brett Yormark. Then Texas started playing their best football of the season the last two weeks, and I let myself dream.

These players deserve it for what they’ve meant to the program and to Austin. Most fans can probably count on two hands the players who were special to them between 2010 and now. That’s more the fault of the university and coaches before Sarkisian than it is the players themselves, but it was hard to believe that some of those players loved Texas as much as the fans did.

But on Senior night last Friday, we had to say goodbye to Whittington, Sweat, Murphy, Ford, Barron, Bush, Jones, Majors, Watts, Thompson. Probably Worthy, Mitchell and Collins too. It’s only right to think of the wise words of Winnie the Pooh: “How lucky (are we) to have something so special, that makes saying goodbye so hard!” Those guys deserve the conference championship. They deserve the playoff.

But, I need to remember it’s the hope that kills you, so stop thinking of all of that, just laugh at A&M who backpedaled on Mark Stoops for fear of fan revolt and the CORPS marching on Ross Bjork’s office led by Billy Liucci. The Aggies hired Duke’s coach? Is this a spinoff of Ted Lasso? I’m getting off track, but I’m scared to get back on it, and I hear myself say to myself: keep deflecting your fears about the conference championship and playoff with more shots at the Aggies who fired Jimbo Fisher to hire one of his former assistants.

Forget it, he’s rolling.

We’re still ranked seventh in the playoff. Strength of schedule, ranked victories, common opponents be damned, I guess. Did the committee not bring any of those things to Thanksgiving? Oregon beat Texas Tech by 8 a week after they lost to Wyoming and were starting the wrong quarterback. Texas beat Texas Tech who had won three conference games in a row by 50. Come on Washington, don’t let Oregon get their revenge. I’ve never been madder at Oklahoma than I am right now. I wanted the Horns to avenge Red River.

The Longhorns are finally great and 11-1, looking at 12-1, but are going to get left out of the last four-team playoff, aren’t they? A special season can’t end with a bowl game against Tulane, can it? Now, our playoff hopes rest on freaking Louisville beating Florida State. Well, I guess they do owe us for taking Charlie Strong off their hands. But for now, all that matters is Saturday at Jerry World. One more matchup against a Hateful Eight member which will write the final chapter of the only conference I’ve ever known. I’m about to publish this, but I think of Roll Left.

What I really remember about 1996 is my mom taking me to Sonic for a lemonade and a treat after Texas and James Brown upset Nebraska for the first Big 12 title. We rode through our neighborhood with the windows down on a sunny December day as she blared Texas Fight and March Grandioso on tape through the speakers of her old two-toned GMC Suburban, the manufacturer called the two colors Brandywine and Buckskin. I remember how she felt about winning that first one; God knows how I’ll feel about the Horns winning the last.

Texas 34 Pokes 19