This is the game that the Big 12 has been dreaming of for almost two decades.
Texas vs. Oklahoma ... for everything.
For so long, it was the championship game that couldn't happen, even if the two programs were always the two best teams, because of their placement in the same division. However, the only thing holding the game back the last couple of seasons with the reemergence of the title game was Texas not being very good.
That is no longer an issue with the resurgence of the Texas program this season, which means on Saturday we get a game that has an extremely high set of circumstances. It's one thing to declare that the winner of this rivalry puts itself in the pole position for a Big 12 title and it's another to actually determine the title.
When Roy Williams leaped over Brett Robin in 2001, it wound up not mattering in the big picture. The same is true of Colt McCoy and Co. winning in 2006. Or Charlie Strong getting his biggest win as the Texas coach back in 2015.
Fast forward to December and what we have in front of us is a situation that renders what happened in October as virtually useless. Of course, Texas wouldn't be in this game without the 48-45 win earlier in the season, but the usual spoils from that game are suddenly gone.
If the Longhorns win on Saturday, the totality of a two-fer over the Sooners, which would include a Big 12 Championship celebration, would create a level of disappointment that the Oklahoma program has never known before. Hell, who has?
Alabama has never had to play Auburn twice. There's never been a Michigan/Ohio State rematch. Perhaps the only thing that surpasses the stakes in a rivalry re-do was in January of 2012 when Alabama and LSU played for a second time in the national championship game, which is probably the best example of the stakes in this game for the Longhorns.
Ask that 2011 LSU team how valuable beating Alabama once, but losing the second time around was. The reality is that if Texas loses, very little that's positive will remain from that win in October. Argue with me if you like, but Oklahoma fans will be celebrating a fourth straight Big 12 title throughout the process.
Frankly, I'm not sure that either fan base has completely absorbed the stakes on Saturday, partly because we haven't lived through this before. It's the difference between playing in a $25,000 poker game with someone else's money vs. playing with all of the money you've got in the bank. Yes, you might double it all, but you might also end up with nothing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this game with the highest stakes, but I'll completely understand if some of you get a refill on Xanax this week.
No. 2 - This week's Sam situation ...
The reality of this week's game is that Sam Ehlinger has to be great against the Sooners, as he was back in October.
Not very good. Not sometimes great. One hundred-percent great.
Kyler Murray was pretty damn good in this game back in October and it wasn't quite good enough. The two times that he truly flinched were the difference in a game that featured zero flinches from Ehlinger.
With all due respect to the Texas defense, which has played its best football in the last two games, it's going to take 40+ points to win on Saturday against the Sooners and the Ehlinger that played his worst game of the season coming off a re-injury of his throwing shoulder on Saturday won't be good enough.
Considering none of us know how close to 100 percent he'll be this weekend, it's an unfair set of circumstances to be rushed into, but fairness ain't got nothing to do with any of this. If fairness mattered, Texas wouldn't have to beat Oklahoma twice just to make the first win still count. If fairness mattered, Oklahoma would need to beat Texas in a best two-of-three format.
It is what it is and nothing is changing any time soon, which means that Ehlinger has to be great on Saturday, not just for Texas to win the game, but for Texas to still be in the game in the fourth quarter.
No. 3 - Todd Orlando's goal on Saturday ...
The Longhorns have to get to Kyler Murray, early and often. While it's true that pressure is often the kryptonite for all quarterbacks at every level, it's especially true of Murray.
Believe me, I get it. If I was 5-8 and weighed 180 pounds, I'd want no part of getting hit by players that weigh more than 100 pounds more than me, either.
If you look back at the game in October, Murray turned the ball over twice, mostly because he didn't want any smoke from any Texas defender. Of course, you can't hit what you can't catch, and that's the rub with defending Murray. If you play too aggressively, he's going to find a running lane and scoot 75 yards on you. However, you can't drop eight and pray, either.
You have to bring pressure and it has to get there. Period.
It makes the play of B.J. Foster, Anthony Cook and any other Texas player Orlando sends on exotic blitzes incredibly important. Your big guys aren't going to get to Murray, not on most occasions. It might have to be the kids (true freshmen) that do the heaviest lifting.
Bottom line - Texas has to turn Murray over and the only way to do that is to make him feel as if he has to protect himself.
No. 4 - Mack Brown to UNC ...
Man, I don't get it.
Mack Brown is 67 years old and hasn't really been all-in as a college head coach in almost a decade. If we're keeping it 100, the Brown that turned Texas into a college power vanished in 2008-09 when the Longhorns named Will Muschamp as the head coach in waiting. From that moment on, he turned a lot of the heavy lifting in recruiting and season preparations over to Muschamp and his assistants, which is why there was so much speculation that Brown would step down after the national championship game in January if 2010 ... had the Longhorns won the game.
Go back to that 2010 season and one of the burning issues that tore the program down was Mack blaming his assistants for what happened that season when he basically had mailed it in throughout the off-season.
He spent the final three seasons in Austin trying to reignite the spark that once made him great, but he couldn't find the fire device needed to make it happen.
In the final days of his tenure in Austin, Brown mentioned that he was killing himself with work in recruiting. You know what other coaches call it? Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday. You get it?
Personally, I'll be rooting for him to have success at North Carolina because as a human being, I totally understand wanting to leave the area of your greatest success on a high note or on your own terms, which is not what happened in Austin.
Yet, I'd argue that Mack Brown from 1998-2008 won't be walking through the doors at North Carolina when he holds his first team meeting. That was another guy from another time.
No. 5 - Compare and contrast ...
Continuing our way through the class of 2015, we take a look at the defensive tackle position, which featured two four-star prospects and eight total prospects on the Rivals Texas Top 100. It's a position that has struggled across the board in recent years in the state of Texas and this list will cause depression more than anything else.
Previous position breakdowns: Quarterbacks, Running Backs, Wide Receivers, Offensive Linemen, Defensive ends, Linebackers and Defensive Backs
Top In-State prospects
1. Daylon Mack (Signed with Texas A&M) - Has been an absolute bust for most of his career, but has been a solid starter as a senior, producing a career-best seven tackles for loss and three sacks in 11 games.
2. Darrion Daniels (Signed with Oklahoma State) - A solid multi-year starter for the Cowboys, who has missed the majority of his senior season because of a hand injury.
3. Du'Vonta Lampkin (Signed with Texas) - Proved to be as good of a college player as he was a Spanish student, starting two games in his career before declaring for the NFL draft. The NFL didn't view him as a draftable player and he's not currently on anyone's roster.
4. Kingsley Keke (Signed with Texas A&M) - A three-year starter for the Aggies, Keke has nearly 150 total tackles and 11 sacks in his career.
5. Bryce English (Signed with Kansas State) - Transferred from Kansas State to North Texas, but hasn't yet emerged as a starting-level player in his junior season.
6. Joseph Broadnax (Signed with TCU) - Was a solid role player for the Horned Frogs as a defensive lineman the last few years, but injuries took a toll and it looks like his playing days are over.
7. Zach Abercrumbia (Signed with Rice) - A multi-year starter and co-captain for the Owls during his junior season in 2018. Ranks second on the team in tackles.
8. Ross Donelly (Signed with Mississippi) - A back-up throughout his career.
Beyond those eight, there really wasn't anyone worth mentioning four years later from the three and two stars from the state, which means Daniels and Keke are as good as it gets.
Overall reaction?
No. 6 – If I had a vote that mattered …
1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. Notre Dame
4. Georgia
5. Oklahoma
6. Ohio State
7. Central Florida
8. Texas
9. Michigan
10. Washington
Heisman Top 3: Tua Tagovailoa, Kyler Murray and Will Grier
No. 7 - Don't look back, Texas hoops ...
In beating North Carolina and challenging Michigan State for about 30 minutes last week in Las Vegas, the Texas Longhorns men's basketball team under Shaka Smart proved that it can play a high-level brand of basketball against the nation's elite.
As someone that watches every game, my request for everyone in the program is simple - don't turn back.
This team has the defense and potential guard play to produce exciting and inspiring play, night in and night out. The problem was that until the games in Vegas on Thursday and Friday, we hadn't seen a lot of it.
Now that we have, there's no reason to go backwards. None.
No. 8 – Eternal Randomness of the Spotty Sports Mind …
... Just once ... just once ... can the Aggies win a big game without acting like Aggies? That was a pretty epic when over LSU on Saturday night, it's just too bad that the Aggies did that thing where they act like horrible sports by attacking people on the field and generally acting like people that have never been successful without massive levels of cheating before. Of course, maybe that's part of the problem. In it's previous combined 20 games against rivals LSU (previous eight) and Texas (previous 12), the Aggies had won three of them. I thought Jimbo Fisher officially became an Aggie earlier in the year when he blew a game that he should have won. The truth is that you only become an Aggie when you or your family do the things that go against the mythical Aggie code, which is why when his kin allegedly punched an LSU coach with a pacemaker and then made no attempt to make the situation right, he truly became an Aggie.
Signed,
Someone that watched A&M members of the corp assault countless Texas fans on Kyle Field back in 1995.
... Speaking of needing to be better, Fox announcer Gus Johnson and his cohorts treating Urban Meyer as some sort of victim from his failures as a human being this season and spouting off about Saturday's win over Michigan as some sort of tale of redemption was just a little bit tone deaf. And by tone deaf, what I really mean is that it was incredibly tone deaf.
... Chris Peterson completely outclassed Mike Leach over the weekend.
... Baker Mayfield was pretty great on Sunday in a win over the Bengals, but I found his comments about Hue Jackson crossing some sort of ethical line by joining the Bengals to be fairly rich. After all, he's the guy that transferred from Texas Tech to Oklahoma. That dude just doesn't have any self-awareness at times.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 NFL Quarterbacks of All-Time ...
I don't feel like we've argued about this in a long time.
1. Tom Brady
2. Aaron Rodgers
3. Joe Montana
4. Peyton Manning
5. Drew Brees
6. Dan Marino
7. Steve Young
8. Roger Staubach
9. Brett Favre
10. Johnny Unitas
No. 10 – And Finally ...
Finally, my heart aches for former Longhorn basketball player Jonathan Holmes, who reported on Instagram over the weekend that he was sexually molested as a child and had been keeping it quite for more than 15 years.
"Come out and speak your truth no matter what," Holmes said. "I've gone through depression, suicidal thoughts, and more pain than I can express.
"At my core, I am a dope person with nothing but love and happiness, and the people who truly know me know that for a fact.
"Don't let abuse ruin your life no matter what the consequences for other may be. Including myself."
Amen, Jonathan. Amen.
