Herman: Program ‘excited’ to play
AUSTIN — Before this season began, Texas focused on something far more substantial than going back-to-back as Alamo Bowl champs.
But the way this campaign unraveled, that’s now the best-case scenario for beleaguered coach Tom Herman and the 20thranked Longhorns (6-3, 5-3 Big 12).
Representatives for the 2020 Valero Alamo Bowl announced No. 20 Texas (6-3, 5-3 Big 12) and Colorado (4-1, 3-1 Pac-12) will meet in this year’s game at the Alamodome, scheduled to be played at 8 p.m. Dec. 29. ESPN will televise the game.
“These guys are competitors,” Herman said of his players on Sunday during a Zoom news conference. “Any time you tell them they’re going to go play a game, they’re going to be motivated.
“I know we are, as a program, extremely excited. Especially when they news broke that we would be staying in our home state and not having to fly anywhere for our bowl game, and this senior class means so much to this team, and I know to a man they all want to make sure that they give this senior class everything they’ve got, because they
know they deserve it.”
But Texas has already lost some of that class as players opt-out to prepare for the 2021 NFL Draft.
Starting left tackle Sam Cosmi, starting defensive tackle Ta'Quon Graham and starting strong safety Chris Brown all announced they would not participate in the bowl game. So did a couple of junior starters: free safety Caden Sterns, a former Steele High School star, and jack linebacker Joseph Ossai.
All five were named team captains before the regular season.
Accounting for those departures and the seasonending injury to starting center Derek Kerstetter, a former Reagan High School product, Texas will have just one captain on the field at the Alamodome. And it will be the last time twotime captain and senior
quarterback Sam Ehlinger leads the Longhorns into a game.
“It's bittersweet,” Herman said. “I think we're all excited to send him out, or attempt to send him out and all of the seniors that will be leaving our program out with another bowl victory. Sam has done so much for this program, both inside the locker room and in the community of Austin and for this university, so it will be bittersweet, no doubt about it.
“But I'm going to savor every last practice, every last minute I have with this great group of seniors that most of them came in when we took this program over, and have been great models of leadership for our team and our university.”
Texas reached No. 9 in the Associated Press Top 25 this year before dropping consecutive games to TCU and Oklahoma. The Longhorns still had a chance to reach the Big 12 championship game by winning out, but couldn't get by Iowa State in a 23-20 loss at Royal-Memorial Stadium.
Colorado began its season Nov. 7 with a 48-42 win over UCLA and reeled off
three more victories before being eliminated from Pac-12 title game contention with a 38-21 loss to Utah.
Including conference championship games, Texas and Colorado have met in the postseason three times. Texas has won two of those meetings against its former Big 12 foe, including a 70-3 pasting of the Buffaloes to claim the 2005 Big 12 title.
Texas managed to put an optimistic spin on a disappointing 2019 season by boat-racing No. 11 Utah, 3810, in the Alamo Bowl. Ehlinger threw for 201 yards and three touchdowns with one rushing score to earn offensive MVP honors; Ossai collected nine tackles, six tackles for loss and three sacks to garner defensive MVP honors.
But Texas fell short of expectations again in 2020, prompting athletic director Chris Del Conte to pursue retired three-time national champion Urban Meyer as a replacement. After all that, another win in the Alamo Bowl, no matter how dominant, would land as a hollow accomplishment for Herman in Year 4.
What Texas can do is continue evaluating its young talent, a process that began Dec. 5 during a 69-31 win over Kansas State that, due to COVID-19 issues within the Longhorns' program, also served as a regular-season finale.
“We have more COVID issues than we did three weeks ago or two weeks ago when we headed to Manhattan (Kan.), so that might elevate a few more young guys into some key contributor roles, but I know that the young guys we have played with have fared very, very well,” Herman said. “And I expect the ones that will be playing for the first or second time this year will do much of the same.”