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In a college football weekend where several of the nation's top teams needed to scrape and claw to keep their heads above water in the 2009 BCS title race, three teams from the state of Texas made statements in Texas-sized ways.
Texas, TCU and Texas A&M — each with different stories, situations and varying legions of "haters" — won definitive contests on Saturday. Two of the three silenced critics from far and wide with much-needed victories, while the third established itself as a legitimate national power that demands to be recognized as a top tier program worthy of title game consideration.
Four of the top five ranked teams in the land — Alabama, Florida, USC and Iowa — won their respective games this weekend (some in more dramatic fashion than others), but none did so in a truly definitive, fist-in-your face fashion. Alabama's passing offense showed its glaring flaws for a third straight weekend, Florida let yet another SEC doormat stick around until late in the fourth quarter, Oregon State put up 36 points on the "vaunted" USC defense just a week after Notre Dame lit the Trojans up for 27, and Iowa, though certainly impressive down the stretch, relied on yet another heart-wrenching fourth-quarter comeback to survive a test from unranked Michigan State.
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Of the nation's top five teams, only Texas looked unbeatable on Saturday.
It's about time.
Traveling to Columbia for a nationally televised road game under the lights vs. Mizzou just a week after a rather sloppy 16-13 win over Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout, the Longhorns came out guns-a-blazin' and blew the doors off the Tigers early on en route to a dominant 41-7 victory.
Quarterback Colt McCoy started off sizzling, completing his first 11 passes and producing touchdowns on Texas' first three drives. The 41-7 beating was Missouri's worst home loss since a 38-0 loss to Kansas State ended the 2002 season. A homecoming crowd of 71,004 was silenced before the game practically even started and thousands were headed home by halftime. A national audience was treated to the sights of a less than half-full stadium early on in the fourth quarter.
This was the 2009 Texas Longhorns squad the nation had been waiting for.
Of all the top teams in the country, perhaps no squad's been given less national respect or attention than the Longhorns. Through seven games, the Longhorns' offense had been much criticized as an underwhelming conglomeration of big passing stats vs. small-time opponents and an inconsistent running game. With expectations of a 2009 Heisman campaign out of quarterback Colt McCoy, it's been defensive coordinator Will Muschamp's dominant defense that's led the way for UT.
On Saturday, both the defense and the offense decided to come and play.
''Our defense has been playing lights-out, and we wanted to give them something to play for,'' McCoy said afterward. ''This is the biggest team sport there is, and when you can have 11 guys playing together every snap, you win like this.''
The Longhorns got off to a quick 21-0 lead and at one point in the first half, were winning the total yardage battle 170-1.
If Texas's dominant win in Columbia silenced the pundits (for the time being, at least), TCU's blowout victory over BYU likely woke 'em up. Buried at 8th in the BCS standings last week, the Horned Frogs traveled to Provo and whooped on a strong, well-balanced, and well-coached Cougars team.
In Saturday's 38-7 victory, TCU held BYU to under 300 yards of offense and didn't turn the ball over once. Coach Gary Patterson's defense — long respected in college football circles as one of the best, but rarely acknowledged on the national scale — sacked BYU quarterback Max Hall five times.
''We've been having fun all year. That wasn't very much fun,'' Hall said in his postgame presser ''That defense is the best defense that I've faced.''
Hall was under center against Oklahoma and Florida State earlier this year.
The computers — more so than the humans — rewarded TCU for the gutsy effort, leap "frogging" them over fellow non-BCS unbeaten Boise State in their various rankings. The computers improved TCU's average rank from eighth to fourth on Sunday, while downgrading Boise State from fifth to eighth. As you know, only one non-BCS conference school is guaranteed a BCS berth in late January. With the jump over Boise in the BCS standings, TCU sits in the driver's seat in the dueling programs' current two-car race.
Clemson's overtime win over Miami certainly helped the Frogs' computer rankings (TCU beat the Tigers in September), but it was the dominant fashion in which TCU routed the Cougars that really caused the jump. A win over Utah on Nov. 14 could essentially cancel out any Oregon-related boost of Boise's future standings status.
In truth, through seven games, TCU's looked as good as any team in the nation. They've gone on the road and beaten quality ACC teams (Clemson and Virginia) and blown out nationally respected conference foes. Gary Patterson's defense — primarily made of a bunch of former high school running backs converted into defensive demons (including leader Jerry Hughes) — is arguably the fastest unit in the nation.
Though a Fiesta or Sugar Bowl appearance in 2010 is probably more likely, the thought of TCU playing for the BCS title against the thoroughbreds from Florida, Alabama, or Texas is an enticing one, too.
It's actually not that absurd a notion to consider.
If Boise State got the non-BCS conference bowl-busting ball rolling in 2007 and Utah took it to new heights in last year's Sugar Bowl showcase against Alabama, perhaps it's TCU's turn to take it to the next level. If December presents another sea of 1 and 2-loss BCS conference teams jockeying for the top two spots in the BCS standings, it'd be hard to just write this TCU squad off as unworthy of a shot at the belt.
Saturday's victory transformed TCU from a respected non-BCS conference competitor into a legitimate contender.
On the very same Saturday Texas and TCU drew lines in the sand and won statement games, an entirely different kind of win, under entirely different kinds of circumstances, was witnessed in Lubbock.
Texas A&M entered Saturday's game vs. Texas Tech as 23-point underdogs and just a week removed from a 62-14 loss to unranked Kansas State. In the seven days leading up to Saturday's game with the Red Raiders, just about every possible thing, coming from just about every possible media outlet, was said about head coach Mike Sherman.
Check the polls
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A change at the top and a Pac-10 team cracking the top 10 highlight this week's AP rankings. See the new AP poll 25 here. |
A mere sampling:
Well, sure enough, Sherman's kids went out and downright clobbered no. 21 Texas Tech in Lubbock to the tune of a 52-30 blowout victory.
Tech started the game with a score on its opening possession. Texas A&M then fumbled on its first offensive play. That could have been it right there. The end of the game, the end of the season, and quite possibly, the end of the Sherman Era in College Station.
But the Aggies did something that no one — with perhaps the exception of their coach — thought they possibly could do. They responded.
A&M stopped Tech on that ensuing possession, scored a touchdown the next time the offense took the field, and proceeded to roll up 334 first-half yards, 559 for the game, en route to their first conference victory of the season.
"This was the players' game," said Sherman, the second-year A&M coach. "It was all about the players and their performance and how they handled themselves and the adversity."
"I told the guys during the week that this game was more about them as a man than as a football player," Sherman added. "I'm proud of them, both as men and as football players."
Even the harshest of Sherman's critics had to have been at least somewhat impressed with the effort the coach got from his kids on Saturday. Defensive coordinator Joe Kines was downright blown away, "He brought this team from utter despair Monday to a point where they could play hard and win the game."
Whether it was the out-of-nowhere quarterback pressure (the Aggies sacked Taylor Potts five times) that'd been nonexistent all season, the explosive running game (both Cyrus Gray and Christine Michael had 100-yard days), or the fact Sherman had his team watch Muhammad Ali's 1974 upset knockout of George Foreman prior to the game — the Aggies looked prepared, well-oiled and downright inspired on Saturday.
Suddenly for a 4-3 team just two wins shy of bowl contention, things don't appear to be so bad in College Station after all.
In a week when several teams were fortunate enough to just survive and advance the BCS gauntlet, three different teams from Texas had their biggest wins of the year.
One solidified itself as a frontrunner for the national title, another made a case for being in that very conversation, and a third showed it had a little pride — and perhaps, some big-time skills — in the tank.
All three programs appear to be on the up and up.
