Texas Heads Into "Longhorn Bowl" Against Florida Atlantic

This weekend, college football bowl game overkill driven by ESPN corporate greed will get rolling in Austin, TX with the ESPN Longhorn Bowl when host Texas take on Florida Atlantic.

Wait, that's not right. This is a regular season game. Texas will be playing a bowl game this year, right?

Maybe.

In a previous profile long, long ago in a galaxy far away, this writer predicted Texas would finish 9-3 or 8-4 at best, much to the chagrin of fans in Austin. This writer looked into his crystal ball and said Texas would be lucky to play in the Alamo Bowl this season.
 
The morning of the Texas game in Lincoln, this alleged Nebraska fan predicted Texas would win 22-15.

After listening to fans in Texas claim that they had already purchased tickets to the BCS National Championship Game in Glendale, AZ, the Texas debacle where you wonder if these coaches can really coach is laughable to just about the other 118 Bowl Championship Subdivision foes.

Of course, Mack Brown’s staff was still smarter than Bo Pelini in Lincoln, single-handedly giving Nebraska one more reminder of the dominance it owned over the Big Red superpower in the north and derailing its national title hopes for good in October.

By the way, when your team is down 33-16 and needs one point to make it a 16-point game (relatively speaking a two-score game) do you go for two?

That marked the second time this season that the Texas coaching staff has used the Ouija board two-point conversion system. Maybe they thought the defense would never expect it.
 
In the fourth quarter of games in Austin this season, the stadium that as recently as last season roared with 100,000-plus arrogant fans now is barely a quarter full.

Texas fans have turned on local boy Garrett Gilbert. The court of public opinion wants to give the younger version of the departed Colt McCoy, Case, a chance. Case McCoy is not ready for college football, nor is Gilbert. Gilbert, however, is the NFL prototype guy. He is what Chris Simms was supposed to be.

Gilbert is going to struggle because Texas has no ability to run the football, the receivers are dropping everything and the line is not blocking.
 
Gilbert is not Colt McCoy. He’s probably going to end up a lot better than McCoy.

This is the best thing that ever happened to Texas football. More than likely, the best CEO in college football in Brown will be searching for a high-level offensive coordinator after this season. The good news for Texas fans is that he might already be on the staff in Major Applewhite, tipped as one of the best young minds in college football.

If defensive coordinator Will Muschamp gets nervous when some of these high-level SEC jobs start opening up rather soon, something tells me Gene Chizik might have already ruined his golden ticket opportunity at Auburn. Just a hunch, since Auburn is about one NCAA ruling away from being 0-10 this season with the suspension of Cam Newton.
 
Gilbert will be fine. Brown will be fine. Texas will be fine.
 
Just not this season. I tried to tell Texas fans this was coming with a new quarterback, new offensive scheme, a lot of stud players to replace on defense and the loss of a winning quarterback in McCoy. This writer is a huge fan of Gilbert’s ability and believes he can be a 4,000-yard passing quarterback and 40-touchdown guy during his senior year when he stays to pay Texas fans back for 2010.

The Rivals generation fan sees all the stars awarded to these high school players that Texas recruits without really proving anything at a lower level. Texas signs the NFL-combine stat stuffer that could probably care less whether Texas wins or not. It’s NFL or bust for that particular athlete. The mythical legends in Texas high school football can’t be told otherwise when they arrive on campus in Austin.
 
When these kids come in, such as talented defensive end Jackson Jeffcoat, they are coming in more media savvy than ever after being told how good they were for three years in high school. When things go bad, which has not happened in any of these players lives because they are playing at Texas for a reason, nobody knows how to respond to it.

Gilbert is a standup kid, arguably one of the most polished quarterbacks the Lone Star State has ever produced, and he has the statistics to back him up. Not yet in college, but the game will start making sense to Gilbert sooner rather than later. When he gets rolling, look out.

In Austin, by the way, the official excuse is that Gilbert's eyesight failed on him and the fans are ticked that the coaching staff didn't make Gilbert's vision a matter of national security.

This scrutiny, though unfair by a fanbase that quite frankly has unrealistic expectations, will only make Texas better as national title contenders in 2011.

These expectations in Austin are just as they are in Columbus, Lincoln, Norman and Ann Arbor, places where fans feel that the team has a God-given right to play for the national championship every single season. If not, heads will roll.
 
Personally, I think it’s funny to see grown men life their lives on the success or lack thereof of 18 to 23-year-old kids, but whatever.

With Nebraska heading to the murderous life in the Big Ten with 12 teams (Did you see the schedule next season? Good Lord.) and Oklahoma possibly going through a mini-transformation of its own, Texas has an outstanding chance to reclaim the Big 12 with 10 teams next season. Though, Baylor and Oklahoma State will have something to say about that.

Even without a bowl game, Texas still will make a lot of money and now has the Big Daddy contract with ESPN and now is firmly on the teat of Bristol, CT—the
national capitol of college football. Baylor made a bowl game, finally, and there are freeze warnings in Hell.
 
Texas is what it is. A team that has been less successful over time than Oklahoma by a long shot, yet due to money they still call the shots in the Big 12. Texas wanted Nebraska out of the Big 12 in order to get its huge television payday.
 
Texas will still win out, in my opinion, and finish 6-6 to qualify for a bowl game.

Politics. Slavery. Commercialism.
 
Gotta love college football.