"Let There Be No Question"
by whills on Dec 7, 2008 2:35 PM CST
in Texas Longhorns Football
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PrintThere are those times in life when an inch becomes a mile, a second becomes an eternity. When those things occur and you have no power to change those situations, it is time to collect your attention and focus on your intent for the future. In our specific situation, next season begins in January and fulfills the intent of "Let there be no question."
Sometimes your very best is just not enough. That is the nature of competition in this life. While the moment of recognition may send you into an emotional rage or to intense introspection, the wise position is to understand your responsibility in the situation, however large or small it may be, to accept it and to focus outward. Life does not stop just because we get lost in a moment. In fact, that moment is a serious vulnerability if you have enemies at the door and your vigilance is wavering.
Life is not full of replays. But the generations of humans are a spiral in time and sometimes you will get the opportunity to balance the past and reset the future. It is the most human of things to grasp at what slim and diminishing hope that you may have. But when that finally slips from your grasp and you have still survived, life is about the future, about right now.
The Sooners will reap what they have sown, with or without our collusion. We will have our opportunity next October. There is nothing we can do at the moment that will alter their fate. I suspect there are many who are thoroughly enjoying our discomfort. This board is about expressing ourselves and, by definition, is not particularly stoic in the warrior sense. However, that ethic should guide some of our sensibilities. We're Texas - and we're big enough to take it. And we're strong enough to do something about it in the future.
The Horns, as a team, do not have the luxury of dwelling in the past. In a month or so they'll face someone who would just love to wax our ass and to prove this whole interlude was cosmic joke. You youngsters need a little of that Clint Eastwood squint, to screw your butt into the ground and "get mean, get real mean." Because the future is not kind by nature, and it is coming straight at us right now.
Hopefully, the Horns have buried this along with the other artifacts of this season and are strong and wise enough to face the future and begin the quest for next season when they alone can make sure there is no question about who is #1.
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The real key to that is turnover margin.
The Horns were +3 for the whole season. OU was +22 or so. Those gratuitous turnovers have a great deal with final scores.
Eastwood
Anyone seen the trailer for his new movie? Almost 80 and still scares the shit out of me.
The attitude is correct,
but if you don’t fight the system that screwed you, you can do your best over and over again in the future and get screwed just as badly each time. This is especially true when the competition sees no problem in gaming the system however they have to and your side has a problem with doing what it takes to win in that system.
Unfortunately, since they will get a big 12-SEC matchup as they wanted, noone cares how it got there. B/c of this, I think nothing less than all the 1 loss teams who were screwed this year b/c of no playoff (Texas, USC, Penn State, and Alabama) refusing to play in a BCS game would get any attention, but we all know that isn’t going to happen.
There will be repercussions throughout the system due to this year.
While we have a stake in that – and BON has a voice – there are other powers that can act.
As a contrast, remember how outraged we were when we lost to the aglets again last year. We weren’t the only ones who had that reaction. The repulsion went all the way up the power system and came back down to Mack. This BCS situation and Big 12 rules will probably have a similar reaction. We just vented here and made some astute and powerful arguments, but those with real power and money will also have a serious say in this, actions we probably won’t even see until results starting popping up, unconnected and iceberg-like. This was an affront to a hell of a lot of people.
Yea I'm gonna disagree for now (as a fan)
Obviously I don’t have an opponent to be ready for but as a fan, I’m gonna stay bitter and live in the past. The system screwed our boys and elevated the hated land thieves. F*ck that. I will not “get over it” or “let it go”. If I want to be pissed until New Year’s then so be it. That’s my right as a fan and a graduate of our beloved university. It’s not for anyone else to judge how quickly I or any other fan let this travesty go.
This has no bearing on how much I love the team. In fact, if possible, I empathize and feel closer now than ever before with Mack and Co. This cluster f*uck needs to be addressed by the Big 12 and maybe the BCS needs some extreme scrutiny. This is an injustice of the highest order (sports speaking of course) and change is required.
And if I or any of my fellow Longhorn fans want to feel pissy, then that’s just ok too.
by UT2001 on Dec 7, 2008 2:59 PM CST reply actions 1 recs
I'm not trying to control your emotions and your feelings.
There are Texas football games in the past I’m still pissed about, games from decades ago (like when the okies used our wishbone to beat the living shit out of us, for instance). Forgetting is not the dictum – that is the luxury of the fan.
What I’m saying is that this emotion is something useful for the future. I’m not saying forget; I’m saying to re-channel it in some suitable manner.
Yea I know
but I really took this time to respond to some posts (here and all around the Interwebs) basically saying get over it. My catharic time I guess.
Yes, our team needs to put it behind them to rip whomever they play in the bowl game (please be Bama) but we as fans who get so high for our wins have the right to be this low when we perceive an injustice such as this. I got over the Tech loss in a week and I accept that loss b/c it was settled on the field. As you know, this sucks much more donkey d*cks b/c it was not settled on the field.
Amen
I think you can look forward and scream from the mountaintops about an injustice at the same time. I will not be an appeaser.
but do you agree that we want white women?
That it as long as long as Colt leaves some for the rest of us?
Focus on what we can control
Hopefully the team will use this bcs bs non-sense and their true desire to come out and get after ohio state like a combination of Chuck Norris and a pissed-off spider monkey hopped up on moutain dew to put put an asss- whoppun on the buckeyes, and propel themselves into an all out fever for 2009.
Hook em and if we finish #2 to the others well we can all still feel pissed off and know that we are better than ou – and proved it on the field.
by 91horn on Dec 7, 2008 3:01 PM CST reply actions 1 recs
"combination of Chuck Norris and a pissed-off spider monkey hopped up on moutain dew "
You are a poet of the highest order.
+1 good sir.
I agree...sort of
Until we put up a big statement win in our bowl game, let’s leave the rest of the country to argue about how fair or unfair the Big 12 was this season. As a team, we need to hit people in the mouth and take out our aggression on the field. Let our play do the talking.
We can’t change anything at this point but we can change what could happen in future seasons. There is a time and a place to debate this. That time is AFTER we win our bowl game.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains...
…and a hurricane washes away your city.
Thanks for some perspective Whills. There were more preferable outcomes and there may yet be some positive long term resolution.
But right here, right now? I’m just looking forward to the ‘horns kicking someone’s ass in January. Maybe I’m in the minority, but when the rest of you decide to join, the beer is cold and the future’s so bright I’m getting new shades.
proud to swim home
by learned hand on Dec 7, 2008 3:31 PM CST reply actions 1 recs
Well Mr. Hart,
As I stated in my previous posts sports in no way compares to the real world. That being said, please see my comments above.
The beer is just as cold in bitter land. An me or anyone else will not see the light until we feel ready to accept the crappy reality of the situation.
“Don’t be afraid of a guy in shades”
Yes I know that wasn't corey hart
but I couldn’t think of the band that sings that song. Damn this memory
timbuk3
don’t ask why I know that…
"When you get to the end zone, act like you've been there before."
I don't get it.
The Sooners will reap what they have sown, with or without our collusion. We will have our opportunity next October.
Why wil next October suddenly matter? Last October didn’t matter in the end.
Perhaps the most recognizable mascot in sports, and certainly the toughest looking, Bevo is a fixture
Not a bad point
but beating the land thieves always matters. Even if the BCS doesn’t recognize it. Just pisses you off even more right? We win in a neutral field and the powers that be just ignore it?
We've beaten the the idiots 3 of the last 4 years.
I love whipping them. I just want answers from the BCS. I want them to present a case to college football fans why VT and Cincy get so handsomly rewarded for winning in a bad conference and TT gets punished. All of us can make the point for why Texas should be in and we don’t even have to bring up the October game in the Cotton Bowl. In the professional world, companies have Exit Interviews to see how they can inprove. I want an Exit Interview with the BCS. I think we as Longhorn fans, Trojan fans, Red Raider fans, Boise State fans deserve it.
Perhaps the most recognizable mascot in sports, and certainly the toughest looking, Bevo is a fixture
Maybe a court room sceneniro where
PB and Billyzane get to logically refute and or present our arguments? Add the voters to the jury box and I will go out on a limb and say Texas gets more votes after that.
Even if they win it, when they come slinking around here we can always say:
We Beat Your Ass. Double digits beat your ass.
OU could win the Galaxy National Championship and we still will have beaten their land-thieving asses.
This one would not have an asterisk, but a +1, ‘cause we’re the National Champs +1, ’cause we beat their ass.
But they get a pretty crystal ball that everyone wants.
Perhaps the most recognizable mascot in sports, and certainly the toughest looking, Bevo is a fixture
by run Bevo run on Dec 7, 2008 10:26 PM CST up reply actions
Finally had enough
I have had it with the BCS and the politics that goes with it. I would like to see the big $$$ boosters step up and say we will make up what the BCS bowl would pay and the Longhorns boycott the “whatever” bowl. Enough of this crap.
Karma
Texas just learned what karma is all about.
The Longhorns are up in arms about Oklahoma getting voted into the Big 12 title game. They should be. But look beyond the anger. This is payback My Name Is Earl-style.
Rewind to December 4, 2004 when Cal had just won at Southern Miss by 10 points (which included taking a knee with a minute left inside the USM 10) and was ranked No. 4 and in line to get picked up by the Rose Bowl since No. 1 USC was going to the Orange Bowl to win the national title. But then Mack Brown publicly politicked and allegedly made a number of glad-handing phone calls to his poll-voting cronies, begging them to rank his Longhorns ahead of the Bears in the final regular-season poll. This tactic worked. Cal’s lead over Texas in the coaches poll went from 48 points to five allowing the ’Horns to jump the Bears in the final BCS poll and get the Rose Bowl bid.
Guess what Longhorns, 2008 is your karma for 2004. OU gets to go to the Big 12 title game because you only beat the Sooners by 10. Only this time it looks like it cost you a shot at the national title. Grin and bear it.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer team! Go Bears! http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/sportsline
hell of a lot more entertaining, too...
Watching Vince OWN Michigan in that game. Sorry Cal just wasn’t as sexy.
"When you get to the end zone, act like you've been there before."
Yea you need to leave
Re-read your first statement of the argument. You beat SOUTHERN MISS. With all respect to SMQ…who freaking cares. We played one of the most difficult schedules in the nation losing the last of an incredible 4 game stretc of games on the road to a top opponent.
Did you or did you not get your tree hugging ass handed to you by a Big 12 team that year and didn’t we beat Michigan?
2 things
1. Nice job linking to nothing
2. Link to the results of the bowl game. Same results, we win, you lose.
Perhaps the most recognizable mascot in sports, and certainly the toughest looking, Bevo is a fixture
One more thing
We’re Texas and you’re California. Learn your place before you come to our board. Don’t act you’re USC. I guess they would have more respect than that.
Wow, that's pompous.
“Learn your place.” Good to see borderline racial undertones taking place on this board as well.
Seven teams have one loss and 2 non-BCS teams are undefeated. The system is designed to take two of those and pit them together. Every one NOT included has a legitimate beef. Apparently only Texas fans think it’s some type of personal affront to their school, team, manhood, or what not.
The poster last night at the Big XII title game showing a weeping girl with the caption “but . . but . . we’re Texas” apparently had it just right.
The only team to truly get screwed in the history of the BCS was 2004 Auburn. They won them all, were from a BCS conference, and didn’t sniff a national championship. Everyone else has controlled their own destiny from the start and that’s by winning them all.
hmmm
Wow, that’s pompous.
"Learn your place." Good to see borderline racial undertones taking place on this board as well.
Pompous yes, but racist? Um no. Please for the sake of humanity try not flaunt the term racist whenever convienent. We already dealt with those issues this season, ironically from someone with the initials of “double B”.
Perhaps the most recognizable mascot in sports, and certainly the toughest looking, Bevo is a fixture
It's only racist because you read it that way
My comments were directed at his institution not his ethnicity. He should really research his team and it’s limited accomplishments before coming onto our board and spewing his “hate”. I may be a pompous Texas supporter but I do it on “my” board and I do not go to other blogs and talk shit.
Further, by referring to my comments as borderline racist I have to conclude that you are the racist here since I cannot find a single comment of race or ethnicity anywhere on here before your ill advised comments. e keep it to Longhorn sports and nothing else.
So please, leave us alone and let us vent, bitch, moan or whatever the hell I’m doing here. If my BON bretheren dsargee with my comments they’ll let me know and I’ll reevaluate my comments because I actually value their opinion.
“Further, by referring to my comments as borderline racist I have to conclude that you are the racist here since I cannot find a single comment of race or ethnicity anywhere on here before your ill advised comments. e keep it to Longhorn sports and nothing else.”
That is patently false. Earlier in this THREAD, you mentioned TWICE something about wanting “white women.” Now maybe this is an inside joke for UT fans that I don’t get. I’m certainly willing to accept that as I’m not a UT student, alum, or insider. But I hardly call that “keeping it to Longhorn sports and nothing else” or a comment that doesn’t, at least in passing, bring up race.
Since you're probaly a Tech fan I'll let you in on a secret
Yes they were different conversations which anyone (even a Tech graduate) could see are different. And of course EVERYONE here at BON likes the white women. EVERYONE.
Actually, UT2001, I wish I had been here; had to leave and just got back.
So, I would not have put up with the “white women” comment. Not all of us here are white nor are all of us hetero, nor male, nor need we be. “White women” is a loaded phrase in many ways, one which is best avoided. If that’s your preference, fine, but not some choice that should be proselytized. So, in this respect, DoubleB has a point that I’ll honor.
That doesn’t relieve him of some real linkage of the Cal situation; it should have made him aware that the BCS has a political side, that politics in sports and particularly sports media has been around in many forms for over a century, that what Mack did in that instance was not really personal; it was political. Perhaps it is ironic justice from his point of view – I can see that – but he should also note that we are now including the injustice of TT not being included as well. For ourselves, because the protagonist is OU, this is incredibly personal. This will carry forward far beyond a single bowl game and, in that regard, it is far beyond what happened before the ’04 Rose Bowl.
What UT2001 objects to is your relative depth of knowledge, although I see it more as an easy opportunity on your part to get a little revenge. We’ll give you that – but not much more.
“Learning your place” is rather self-defeating in terms of the objectives of not just this blog but of the SB Nation of blogs because what is really being promoted is an overall conversation intra-blog in the same manner as our community conversation here. In a sense, this is about expanding the whole range of the conversation. We are another level of organization of many voices into a forceful medium and we’re inserting ourselves into the power structure of these sports, football, in particular. So, we, in fact, encourage visitors. Without a FAQ, we really don’t have well-defined guidelines, so most behavior is self-enforcing with the posters. We have had trolls, have banned them, but basically that is a drastic action in most times. There is a flow to the conversation and what 2001 emphasizes is staying within the bounds of those, as undefined as it may be.
I went multi-level on all this because it seemed necessary for the perspective. 2001 feels a lot of anguish and I sympathize with him; these are turbulent times.
by whills on Dec 7, 2008 8:28 PM CST up reply actions 1 recs
This post gives me the perfect chance to make a point to ya'll.
To my fellow Longhorn fans,
I am going to be brief here, because it simply isn’t worth spending any more time dwelling on this. Enjoy your time on this board, as I have done and will continue to do, but always remain mindful of something. There are millions of football fans out there, and Longhorn fans represent but a select few in the grand scheme of things. When you have a clown like Bob Stoops running up the score on folks, most people will get it – some will not. When we get screwed, as others have before (not Cal, but Auburn yes – and I knew it in early December of that year as I did the following January) and others will in the future, most will identify with us – and some will not. ESPN had a poll on their site last week and 70% of the votes on this poll, with national representation (presumably), said the Longhorns got screwed. So we did, and we must move on. If you think you’ll get any satisfaction from Craig James, or Kirk, or any of the others saying we got screwed – while we still end up in the Fiesta – I assure you that you will not. And if you let any comments by clowns like Tech92, irish1611, DoubleB, or TexasSooner bother you – then you will have a lot of anger when you should really just chuckle. As I’ve said before, anyone who trolls on an opposing team’s board is a type of classless clown, and there are thousands of them out there. Just relax, enjoy the fact that we are rapidly closing in on Michigan as the Division 1 football program with most wins in college football, and the fact that we are blessed with an incredible sports program across the board.
To paraphrase a great quote, “Never argue with a fool, because you’ll never win and the fool thinks they can.”
Wow, are you still crying 4 years later?
Tech kicked ya’lls asses.
what’s that ?
I think I heard 3rd place Big 12 2005 Texas Tech just score another TD on Cal. What is…354 to 9 ? Cal fans should wake up every day and thank Texas from keeping them from national embarrassment in the Rose Bowl.
Resigned
to the fact that we make it to the mnc game. just do not have barry f***ing at the announcements tonight.
Great post, whills
I think “Let there be no question” should be Mack’s theme for the 2009 team. in addition, having seen some of the coaches’ votes, I think the Longhorn Band needs to start practicing Deguello to be played at the start of the Baylor and Tech games next year. While it is unfortunately your right as a coach to try to game the system by voting OU #1 and UT #5, you should expect to have to pay for your sins.
by Longhorn in Canada on Dec 7, 2008 6:56 PM CST reply actions
Perfect
But should it be as we are marching down the field to score more than 60, or as the defense crushes their feeble hopes once again? Oh, what the hell, it can be both. I don’t mind putting in the 2nd team, but I want the 2nd team to realize their job is to continue to dominate. Fourth quarter = no quarter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKD5TgHWyxM&feature=related
by Longhorn in Canada on Dec 7, 2008 10:49 PM CST up reply actions
Just for this year.
It’s not the kind of thing you’d necessarily want to repeat. The Deguello is not to be taken lightly. Using such a historically rich song is such a powerful piece of texasspeak that it certainly has to have the proper context.
I’m sure a brass-dominated band as the Longhorn Band can come up with a hauntingly appropriate rendition, one that can raise goosebumps. Every Texas fan should stand. And at the end, after a moment of silence as the echoes fade, then everyone yells an incredibly guttural Charge which segues into Texas……..Fight that builds to a frenetic crescendo until play starts in the last quarter. Then we rock’n’roll.
Absolutely
It could easily be overdone, and would lose its power. The start of the 4th quarter of the OU game is probably the best possible time, assuming we are in control. For Baylor we could just get the fans to chant: “How you votin’ now, Art?” after every TD. Baylor doesn’t deserve El Deguello.
by Longhorn in Canada on Dec 8, 2008 11:19 AM CST up reply actions
The nuclear option
It pains me to suggest this because I hate the thought of hurting the sport I love, but there is something that we can do. Letters to ADs and conference commissioners won’t mean anything.
Want to change this mess? TAKE IT TO WHERE THEY LIVE.
Watch the BCS games, note the names of the advertisers and sponsors, and write them letters that you are boycotting their products because of their affiliation with the BCS mess. Then, DO IT.
Sure, it means no Tostitos or Dr Pepper or not buying insurance from Allstate. It was TV that got us into this mess and it is going to have to be TV that gets us out.
So, horn fan – pissed that we’re playing OSU in AZ? Get your tablet. Alabama fan, ticked off you are playing Utah? Get some stamps. Utes, upset you had NO chance to play for the title even though you were undeafeted? Get your envelopes. Nothing will fix this faster than thousands of angry consumers voting with their wallets.
“On my signal, unleash hell.” – Maximus
This is one of the many ways to send a message.
I think a lot more will be popping up. And that would be great.
Can't do it, sorry
You take away my Dr. Pepper, you take away my life.
by goingforthecorner on Dec 7, 2008 9:23 PM CST up reply actions
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