Ghosts of Pasadena still haunt Longhorns
A dozen years after the night in Southern California that altered the course of college football history, the memory that endures is not Texas quarterback Colt McCoy standing on the sideline, stoic and helpless.
It’s not Alabama linebacker Eryk Anders, unblocked, walloping Garrett Gilbert and snuffing out a comeback attempt. It’s not even a triumphant Nick Saban lifting a crystal trophy, foreshadowing many more to come.
Instead, what always springs to mind is a scene from the day before. Inside a huge hotel ballroom, on a stage in front of a hundred or so cynical, blearyeyed sports writers, Mack Brown delivered what might have been the most stirring pregame news conference of all time.
Long criticized for being too thin-skinned and too indecisive, the Longhorns coach was neither that morning. He was funny, he was relaxed, and he was engaging. During one of Brown’s many off-the-cuff, perfectly chosen anecdotes, an Alabama reporter turned to a colleague and said, “I’d vote for him.”
But above all, Brown was confident, as if heading into that national championship game in January 2010 against the top-ranked team in the country he knew something about his program the rest of the world — and even people at UT — didn’t.
“I’m not sure that we ever
give ourselves enough credit,” Brown said. “We’ve got a good team, too.”
What happened the next night at the Rose Bowl — when Alabama knocked McCoy out of the game early and won 37-21 — shattered more than Brown’s understated bravado. It wrecked the Longhorns’ sense of direction, and they haven’t found their bearings since.
The program Brown described in that press conference was one secure in its own stature. A bit cocky, perhaps, but with ample reason to be.
Twelve and a half years later? The Longhorns enter their next meeting against Alabama as underdogs again. But this time, convincing themselves they have a chance figures to require a lot more work.
To say UT and the Crimson Tide veered in opposite directions after their 2010 meeting would be an understatement, and it’s probably not worth rehashing too many of the details. Saban built one of the most powerful dynasties the sport ever has seen, while the Longhorns occasionally beat Kansas.
They’re three head coaches removed from Brown now. Not only do no players on the team have any memories of competing for national titles or winning conference championships at UT, few of them have any memories of even watching the Longhorns do those things. When McCoy led a last-minute drive to beat Nebraska to win the Big 12 in 2009 and set up that last showdown with Alabama,
current UT quarterback Quinn Ewers was 6 years old.
So even though everyone from Brown to Charlie Strong to Tom Herman to Steve Sarkisian has signed Top 10 recruiting classes in Austin over the past decade, the on-field results have made it difficult to maintain the notion that UT’s roster is just as good as everyone else’s.
In fact, it’s gotten to the point where the head coach of one of the most storied programs in the sport — one renowned for having its pick of the premier prospects in the world — is starting to sound like the coaches of the plucky upstarts that used to have to face vaunted UT.
“Culture a lot of times can have an opportunity to beat
talent when the culture is strong,” Sarkisian said Monday, speaking of this Saturday’s home game against the Crimson Tide, and let’s just take a moment to marvel at that. His message was well-intentioned, and it might be accurate.
But the tone is so far removed from the last time a Longhorns coach looked forward to facing Alabama, most people back then would have found it unrecognizable. And for the coach of a team coming off a 5-7 season to suggest that culture might decide a game against a program that has lost eight games combined in the last eight seasons?
Maybe so. But good luck with that.
Still, it’s hard to blame Sarkisian for grasping at anything motivational ploy that might work. The Crimson Tide are 20-point favorites this week for a reason, and it would be foolish to expect Sarkisian to carry himself the way Brown did at the end of a decade in which the Longhorns averaged more than 11 victories per season.
It's going to take a lot more than one big afternoon for UT to get that back. But if the Longhorns pull off the unthinkable Saturday, and then use an Alabama outcome to propel them in the opposite way the last one did?
Maybe someday Sarkisian will be able to say, “We’ve got a good team, too.”
And believe it the same way Brown once did.