Resignation and Common Threads

Can the Longhorns pull me back in?

I wrote after The Red River Shootout that the Longhorns’ drubbing of OU would have been the game that the sports movie ended on. It was a perfect finale: the downtrodden team with the storied history finally rises up again and pummels the bully that has tortured it for so long. In the movies, you don’t need to see the next game, because you know the course has been corrected. All are heroes. There’s no Iowa State escape or disaster in Stillwater, because it’s forever bliss - 10,000 years of a victory chorus. But, as I’ve mentioned before, sports don’t care about the fans’ feeble desire for the perfect narrative. In the real world, the storylines are more cruel and the past few weeks have laid them bare: the phenom quarterback Quinn Ewers shows he’s a work-in-progress, Steve Sarkisian: mastermind offensive coach, has shown that he’s literally mad about the deep ball to the point that an intervention might be required, and the team that seemed to have turned the page fell backward into familiar traps. In the loss to Oklahoma State, all these things added up to lead me to my annual resignation weekend.

Resignation weekend is the time on the annual sports calendar where I distance myself from the team in whom I’m too invested. It’s where you come to terms with the fact that whatever season your team is partaking in won’t be one that you tell your grandkids about while bouncing them on your knee. Resignation weekend brings about a death knell where my hopes and dreams from the summertime are buried deep into the earth. Even though there’s mourning, there’s also closure and a strange peace and freedom that comes with it and, at first, it’s empowering, like someone who has just been dumped and decides to get in shape. For example, in the past two weeks I haven’t daydreamed about the Longhorns at all. I’ve used the time usually occupied by sports to read two books and start a third. I’ve put in more of an effort at work. Most importantly, I’ve signed out of Twitter and spent less time on message boards diagnosing the Longhorns’ problems and prescribing obvious remedies. Last Sunday, I watched all of Sam Ehlinger’s first NFL start and I planned to write about him to serve as open week content, but the blank page proved too daunting, resignation weekend had left me too disconnected. I usually dissect game previews, podcasts and analyses as if they’re battle plans, but now I’m going in blind to this weekend’s matchup with Kansas State. I realize that might be like burying the lede for my dear readers who come here for analysis on the Longhorns and their opponents, but the truth is that I have no insight to offer about the game this weekend. Because the truth is, after resignation weekend, I keep the Longhorns at arm’s length for the rest of the season and I try to tell myself I’m better off.

But, with resignation weekend comes loss too. Sports have their highest value to me because of the sense of community and the shared experiences they create. After the cruel realities of a team’s season are apparent, I’m usually more productive and more well-read, sure, but watch parties are usually smaller, conversation amongst friends is quieter and I retreat more into the part of myself where I say that I shouldn’t care about sports anyway. I tell myself that it’s all a waste of time, energy and money. I think less about my sports writing, which is communally shared and inherently relies on other subject matter in order to exist, and I think more about my personal fiction writing, which nobody really sees. Those non-sports stories are hard to write and bring about searing vulnerability just by putting words on a page.

I saw The Banshees of Inisherin this week, the new film by acclaimed Irish filmmaker Martin McDonagh, and in the conflict between the two main characters I saw the tug of war that occurs within me over sports. The story centers around two lifelong friends and the dissolution of their relationship. The gist of it is that the inward Colm (played by Brendan Gleason) decides he no longer wants to be drinking buddies with the sweet and happy-go-lucky Padraic (played by Colin Farrell). Colm feels like his daily talks with Padraic at the local pub are distracting him from what’s important in life and he abruptly ignores his friend. Colm then resolves to spend his newfound time composing music and reading. After ignoring Padraic, Colm associates with purported local intellectuals rather than supposed simpletons. The loss of friendship sends Padraic into a dark spiral and he desperately tries to win back his friend. Like Colm, I try to convince myself there are better things I could be doing than caring about the Longhorns. Padraic can’t understand why Colm won’t accept that he is a nice person and that he should simply enjoy the little pleasures in life, like drinking a warm Guinness over casual conversation.

Just as Padraic can’t comprehend Colm’s rationale, I don’t know why I struggle to accept that sports bring about so much good in my life, even if my preseason expectations aren’t met and there are games where Quinn Ewers goes 19/49 or Xavier Worthy falls down in the end zone. Sports and the Longhorns have provided me a common thread with my mom, the first of her family to go to college, who was a freshman at UT in 1969 during DKR’s second national championship. They’ve given me a common thread with my wife’s family and her late grandfather who played quarterback for Texas in the 1950’s. Even though he’s gone, I can still hear the way his voice would get so high and giddy as he’d talk about how good and big the incoming class of freshman looked. I even have a common thread with my son, who is now a football crazed maniac at the age of three and wants us to tackle one another every night in the front yard as one of us plays the role of the good Longhorns and the other becomes “the bad Aggies.”

Obviously, balance is required, as it usually is for anything in life that you care about deeply. I know I’ll always care about sports and the Longhorns, no matter how many times I lie to myself after a loss and say that I won’t. I always recall Bob Costas in Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary reflecting on how sports are the one thing that a person will care about with the same energy from the time that he’s a little boy to when he’s an elderly man.  That’s me, for better or worse and there are too many common threads with the Longhorns for it not to be.

As for Texas and Kansas State tomorrow, the Longhorns are in their own tug of war between the team they want to be and the team the detractors say they are. Sarkisian still only has one true road win on his resume while at Texas and that desperately needs to change. This weekend in Manhattan is the Longhorns chance to prove that they’re different from Texas teams of the past few years. The Wildcats were once the original long-time purple tormenters of the Longhorns, but now Texas is on a five year win streak that KSU is eager to end. It’s also mega clash between two of the best running backs the Big 12 has ever seen in Bijan Robinson versus Deuce Vaughn. A win will set up a showdown with TCU next weekend in Austin that will have huge Big 12 title implications, while a loss kicks Steve Sarkisian’s hopes for his program down the road to next season.

As for me, if the Longhorns lose, you can expect more existentialism from my writing going forward. But, if Texas wins, then they’ll be the first Longhorn team in recent memory to actually reverse the effects of a resignation weekend. As Michael Corleone says in The Godfather Part III, “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”