Jaw-to-Jaw, Knucks Down Gut Check

A Red River Shootout with national championship implications, as God intended.

It has always been the kind of game where, as Darrell Royal says, you are asked to screw your navel to the ground and scratch, bite and spit at the other guys. And this time would certainly be no different. It would be a rowdy amplification of all that had come before it. It would be, said Royal, the usual old-fashioned, country, jaw-to-jaw, "knucks-down gut check."

~All Those Eyes of Texas, Dan Jenkins (1969)

Texas is looking to win its first back to back RRS for the first time since 2008-09 when Colt McCoy and co

I revisit the legendary Dan Jenkins’ incomparable work Saturday’s America every year before the Red River Shootout. All throughout the book, he includes unforgettable anecdotes about Texas/Oklahoma, and for three seasons I’ve made one of his lines the title of my preview piece leading up to the game. He captures the nature of the game better than I could, not only because he’s an all-time great, but also because I’m too on the edge of nausea to say anything insightful in those seven days, even if I feel good about the Longhorns chances. As I’ve written before, I only have a corndog at the fair when I’m basking under the rays of victory glowing from the Golden Hat - I’m too nervous to eat before the game anyway. Jenkins writes that rivalries like TX/OU “display the essence of the sport.” The Sooners became Texas’ fiercest rivalry in the Bud Wilkinson and Darrell Royal eras because the game often had an impact on the national championship, whereas the Longhorns’ rivalries with other foes were hostile simply because of proximity.

The Shootout at the Texas State Fair always mattered in my formative years of football fandom because of the grand stakes that it held. Memories of great, early Mack Brown teams are tainted because of the five-year hump between 2000-2004 where he brought a Swiss army knife to the shootout with the Sooners. In those years, the winner was all but guaranteed a shot at glory, while the loser was left on the outside looking in. After all, the team that donned the Golden Hat went on to compete for the national championship six times between 2000-2009. Though since 2010, the rivalry has mattered a lot less to the nation and that’s primarily because of Texas. Even mighty Oklahoma hasn’t played in the title game since 2008 (and that bid should have belonged to Texas) and last year’s game was this century’s first matchup of unranked teams in the Red River Shootout.

And y’all remember what happened in 2022. Texas exorcised its crimson demons, they never let that stupid little wagon roll onto the field and gave a shorthanded and reeling Oklahoma a punishment reminiscent of the most violent parts of the Old Testament. Now, Texas and Oklahoma both are ranked in the Top 15; both are undefeated heading into the game for the first time in forever; and have bigger things on their minds than simply pants-ing their arch nemesis. The winner will be undefeated and headed into the second half of the season riding high against a weak Big 12, while the loser will be left licking its wounds and hoping it can recover from this stumble. It’s a rumble in Dallas with national championship implications, just as God intended. Here are five thoughts on the 2023 Red River Shootout.

1. Oklahoma is undefeated and showing clear improvement on both sides of the ball in Brent Venables’ second year in Norman. Quarterback Dillon Gabriel missed last year’s game, but is now healthy and putting up big stats under Offensive Coordinator Jeff Lebby and overlord emeritus Art Briles. All that being said, Oklahoma fans talking themselves into Venables resemble the guy having a mid-life crisis who is trying to convince himself that his Miata is actually a cool car. Venables went 6-7 in year one and had to overturn his roster entirely, bringing in over 40 new players. I keep reading about how 49-0 will motivate the Sooners to have a better performance in 2023¹ - yet half of the roster probably didn’t even watch the game on TV and will be in the Red River environment for the first time ever. It’s a hard environment to walk into blind. It also will be Dillon Gabriel’s first time actually playing in the game and the biggest test of his long college career thus far.

   The effects of the 2021 coaching carousel are still sending shockwaves through Norman. Oklahoma was spurned by Caleb Williams and Lincoln Riley taking their talents to Venice Beach and Venables happened to be the boy next door. Last year Venables looked like someone the Sooners couldn’t move with to the SEC, but he has the Sooners back on the delusion train once again. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve hopped on board that locomotive many a time, too. But there’s a fair bit of fool’s gold inflating the value of OU’s resume thus far, as the combined record of Oklahoma’s opponents is 12-13 and their offense has struggled when they’ve faced defenses with a pulse. When they run up the score on terrible teams, they’re reminiscent of the MMA fighters punching their opponents in the back of the skull while they’re lying face down and unconscious. In many ways, Oklahoma’s roster is reminiscent of the Texas squads in the 2010’s under Charlie Strong and Tom Herman. Recruiting rankings might say that “talent” exists on paper, but said talent is either young and unproven or exists only as familiar names who haven’t lived up to their star rankings. OU’s NFL draft stock for the 2024 class looks bare and they have clear weaknesses in the trenches compared to Texas. Venables clearly realizes he needs to beef up as Oklahoma heads to the SEC, but if he gets another butt whipping by Steve Sarkisian and Pete Kwiatkowski, the mood in Norman might be so sour that he becomes a dead man walking. Texas hasn’t won two Red Rivers in a row since 2008-09, but that fact itself is the only reason for doubt. That’s not playing into Jahdae Barron or Kelvin Banks’ preparation for the game. It took me a long time to realize players don’t view those factoids the way we fans do.

   

   Here are the facts: Texas has played a better schedule including a double-digit road win over Nick Saban (recent games against backup quarterbacks be damned); the Longhorns have an advantage on the headsets until proven otherwise; they have a more experienced roster: especially when it comes to Red River; and there is an abundance of NFL talent in Austin. Another loss sets Venables back in perception and in reality, while another win elevates Texas even further. Texas is due for a long run of dominance in this game, not from the football gods or karma, but because they’re just the better program right now.

   

2. Quinn Ewers is expected to leave for the NFL after this season, as his brief residency in Columbus a few years ago gave him the ability to reclassify. If he wears the Golden Hat twice, first over his mullet, then on Saturday over his business-like crew cut, he will have done something that Vince Young and Sam Ehlinger never did. Ewers will be the only Longhorn starting quarterback besides Colt McCoy to have worn the Golden Hat multiple times this century. Ewers is now stringing together great performances each week and showing us all that we’d do well to cut more processed foods from our diets. If he wins on Saturday, he’s a Longhorn Legend. I imagine other potential two time winners like Xavier Worthy, Jordan Whittington and J’Tavion Sanders will have a special place in the hearts of Texas fans too.

   

3. The 2010’s were an anomaly in that the Golden Hat went back and forth across the Red River quite often and the games usually were close, but the rivalry has been defined by one team going on a long run of dominance while their rival claws back toward relevancy. It’s a buried fact perhaps unknown to casual Longhorn fans that Darrell K. Royal was an Oklahoma Sooner in his playing days. Royal played for Sooners legend Bud Wilkinson, the Sooners coach who made the rivalry a two-sided affair and elevated it to the national stage. Wilkinson lost his first matchup to Texas, but then from 1948-1957, Wilkinson lost to the Longhorns just once. Then his protégé Royal took the reins in Austin, lost his first test against his master in 1957, and then went on his own run of dominance over his alma mater. DKR gave the hat back to Norman only once between 1958-70. Barry Switzer then took over at Oklahoma and went on a run in favor of the Sooners in the 1970s before Texas coach Fred Akers snatched the hat back for a while. Mack Brown and Bob Stoops each had periods where they controlled the rivalry, as did Lincoln Riley. Steve Sarkisian always has shown he understands this game’s meaning and has come out attacking in both matchups thus far, whereas Venables looked lost last year, much like the other coaches who didn’t get mentioned in this paragraph. If we’re into patterns and such, Sark lost his first game to Oklahoma in 2021, before taking the hat back in convincing fashion last year. Sound familiar?

   

4. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey will be in Dallas on Saturday, taking in from up close what amounts to his new members’ annual fistfight that the rest of the world watches. I’m still not prepared to see the SEC logo on the field at the Cotton Bowl next season, but that might be the moment where it all feels real. As Red River moves to the SEC, the Big 12 loses its marquee rivalry game that has headlined its conference for almost 30 years. Unless Coach Prime picks a fight with a resurgent West Virginia and strikes up a Rocky versus Appalachian Mountain matchup that the country cares about, they’ll never get back a game of this magnitude.

   

5. A prediction: this won’t be the only time this season that we see these teams face off in Dallas or the metroplex, if you will. We’ll get to see them go at it again inside JerryWorld in December, but for now…get ready to see the Crimson side of the Cotton Bowl get another early start on their sad drive North. For the second year in a row, Oklahoma fans will eat postgame turkey legs covered in sweet Sooner tears. Texas 44 Oklahoma 17²

1. During Mack Brown’s dark years against Oklahoma, I think most Longhorn fans thought “this can’t get worse…can it?” Only for it to get worse the next season. I think Oklahoma is entering into their version of that painful era under Venables.

2. Prediction Two: The Sooners will score at the Cotton Bowl for the first time in two years.