"The Week in Quotes" returns for a second go-round, and there was no shortage of stuff to talk about this week in college football. Let's start it off with a couple of thoughts from the Longhorns' head coach:

"The thing that we will explain to the players today is - how selfish of us to feel sorry ourselves that we don't get to play. There are a lot of people this weekend that have got a lot more problems than we have and we need to pray for them." -- Mack Brown on Thursday, Sept. 11.  Mack hit the nail on the head with this thought about how small football can seem in comparison to Mother Nature's destructive power and how it can affect the lives of millions. The other side of that coin is, of course, the comfort that seeing the Longhorns play in coming weeks will provide to many families picking up the pieces from Ike's damage. We saw how important the Saints were in helping New Orleanians regain their civic pride and reunite as a community. Sports will, we hope, have a similar effect for the Texas coast.

"Missouri is averaging 597 yards a game, Texas Tech 584, Oklahoma 556 and they're scoring 54 points, Oklahoma State 546; it's hard to do that against air." --Mack Brown on Monday, Sept. 15. Mack started out his Rice week press conference with an opening statement about how great the Big XII has been. Yes, it's possible--nay, probable--that most of Brown's intention here is to lower expectations for Longhorn fans based on some great early performances by future opponents. But we have always been suckers for folksy Southern coach-speak, and hope readers can appreciate it too. One of us (the one that used to play football) was once called "slower than molasses running uphill in January."

"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?" --President John F. Kennedy, Nov 21, 1963. It really wouldn't be appropriate not to include this one on Rice week. Rice hung tough with Vanderbilt last Saturday and generally seems to be a better team than usual. That doesn't mean Texas won't still stomp them this weekend, but the Owls are looking like a potential bowl team at 2-1 with five conceivably winnable games left. JFK would be proud...to the extent that he would care.

"Want to hear the most Tulane thing ever? The halftime show is sponsored by the Princeton Review." -- TheWaveReport.com editor Scott Kushner. What Scott couldn't have known was that "the most Tulane thing ever" was yet to come, blowing a late 4th quarter lead to #14 East Carolina in devastating fashion. The Wave have looked solid in their two moral victories on the year and we could see them making some noise in an awful C-USA.

"I wished we would've scored a few more points." -- Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville. Auburn scored the third-fewest points possible for a football game and still won the game (3-2) over Mississippi State. There probably isn't another team in the SEC that Auburn could beat scoring only 3 points, but an SEC win is an SEC win.

"It was a difficult day at the office for us." -- Syracuse coach Greg Robinson. Talk about your understatement of the day from the former Texas defensive coordinator. After a humiliating 55-13 loss to Penn State, Syracuse is now 0-3 and is yet to even have a single-digit loss. Things should get easier for the Orangemen as they face Northeastern next week, but sadly it's not looking good for Robinson's head coaching future in New York. That's why you should stay defensive coordinator at Texas for a few more years, Coach Boom.

This week's "Quote of the Week":

"Buckeyes unable to uphold early lead in road contest vs. No. 1 Trojans." -- subtitle on game story from OhioStateBuckeyes.com. We understand the school's website wants to put as much positive spin as possible on a devastating loss, but come on guys. While technically true, Ohio State only held a 3-0 lead for under three minutes against USC. Less than 10 minutes of game time later USC had built an 11-point lead that might as well have been 100.